1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation.
If only there had been some way of temporarily partitioning the country between loonies and sane people, the loonies could have done just as they liked.
If Truss is only planning a fiscal event in September, then either the new regime is misreading the situation entirely, or the tax cut is going to be much more comprehensive than expected...??
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
FWIW - Without serious government intervention our Economic Intelligence Unit - Behavioural Team are saying the chances of a general strike and violence aren't insignificant in the next 12 months.
Ive predicted mass civil unrest in at least 2 EU countries this winter, probably more. Risk also high here.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
Labours is more opinion poll savvy though, in giving the energy fat cats another kicking.
Even if it feels wrong, and has consequences, if the voters lay that as terms for their support, you have to get kicking?
This is the danger for the incoming Lizistration - do the right things to your principles (taxes are far too high) but still hammered by the voters as it’s not all they want isn’t it?
This is yesterdays that keeps getting posted, for comedic/sanitary effect?
Arn’t we expecting Techne - had Tories on 35 last time? And Kantor with just 4% gap last time, due too?
Techne didnt release their tracker on Friday for some reason. Kantar is due imminently
I bet LAB are ahead in those polls!
DYOR 👍
I think you may be correct
Kantor tends to report lower Lab totals and smaller gap between the parties, normally in same ball park as Opinium swingback. A five or even six gap, like 33-39, from Kantor would be very good for Labour. Though still probably wake BJO from his slumber 🙂
We have a red wall poll at 5. That was 15 points lead last time
If this movement in the polls starts to look uniform, the mainstream media may latch on to it, start heaping pressure on to the Tories about urgency for details and announcements?
Tory MPs may come on and blame too much blue on blue for the poll slump - but the truth maybe the country is listening for something positive for them, and keen on government action, and not getting it?
It is frustrating and annoying but only a couple of weeks now before PM Truss and her proposals made public
Maybe not, I understand the “special fiscal event” is October and devoid of usual OBR costing for us to know true implications short and long term - though I agree, to try to get from the coronation to the “this is not a crisis budget” a month later without action or even much detail will be politically courageous and the polling will show as much.
Parliament is in recess first half October whilst the new cap takes effect. The fiscal event will be prior to recess Sept 22nd
If Truss is only planning a fiscal event in September, then either the new regime is misreading the situation entirely, or the tax cut is going to be much more comprehensive than expected...??
Oh yeah, tax cuts and a £100b energy package debt.
FWIW - Without serious government intervention our Economic Intelligence Unit - Behavioural Team are saying the chances of a general strike and violence aren't insignificant in the next 12 months.
Ive predicted mass civil unrest in at least 2 EU countries this winter, probably more. Risk also high here.
You predict a riot?
We'll be fine, we're not in the EU.
I do predict a riot. Several. Germany especially at risk. What happens here depends on how they handle it. Yelp.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
I don't favour nationalisation. As always I think Governments are almost uniquely bad at planning and investment for the future. But at the same time I don't think any company has a right to make a profit at the expense of the lives and welfare of its customers in a time of crisis. Let them have a few lean years after the profits they have made in the past.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Yes, thats the question for every option currently on the table
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Neighbours, schmeighbours. Sweden IIRC outperformed many, most if not all other countries, from memory. In particular wrt excess deaths:
Did it do worse than its immediate neighbours? Depends. It did better than Denmark (which has a very high population density) but worse than Norway (which has a comparatively tiny population density).
imo weighed the balances well and overall I have no doubt will experience fewer post-covid problems, undiagnosed illnesses, mental health issues.
And that's to say nothing of the freedom issue which you seem to dismiss, you of all people, as being of little or no import.
It did worse than Denmark.
Deaths per 1 million population
(UK 2,724) For reference Sweden 1,920 Denmark 1,177 Finland 983 Norway 706.
Freedom is indeed important. But the temporary (and honestly very slight) limits on freedom we suffered were really as nothing compared to the rather more serious curtailment of freedom that results from being dead.
The premise you put forth of a choice between lockdown and death is utterly spurious.
Evidence mounts every month that lockdowns actually caused the deaths of people who were at no risk from covid whatever, so much so even the Telegraph admitted the other day the cure may have been more deadly than the disease.
"Even the Telegraph admitted..."
In an article that sparked all of this because it was a pile of crap and based on "We don't like lockdowns so the excess deaths must have been lockdowns."
Whilst a far better analysis with far more work came up with the actual answer.
Bringing up the other side of the ledger really is uncomfortable for you, isn't it Andy?
Lockdowns kill people who would have survived covid. Suicides, missed medical diagnoses, upsurges in obesity due to inactivity, poverty caused by incurring crushing debt paying people to do nothing. Many more have their life chances ruined.
Deal with it.
Yes, a great pity there wasn't a pain-free costless way to deal with the pandemic.
Ah well. Nice for all the little children to pretend there might have been.
Lockdown zealots are the people who pretended that there was, and it was called lockdown.
So identify one, with quotations betraying that belief.
What on earth is the point of this infantile strawmannery?
Well, anyone in government in spring 2020 who refused to do a cost/benefit analysis, for a start.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Neighbours, schmeighbours. Sweden IIRC outperformed many, most if not all other countries, from memory. In particular wrt excess deaths:
Did it do worse than its immediate neighbours? Depends. It did better than Denmark (which has a very high population density) but worse than Norway (which has a comparatively tiny population density).
imo weighed the balances well and overall I have no doubt will experience fewer post-covid problems, undiagnosed illnesses, mental health issues.
And that's to say nothing of the freedom issue which you seem to dismiss, you of all people, as being of little or no import.
It did worse than Denmark.
Deaths per 1 million population
(UK 2,724) For reference Sweden 1,920 Denmark 1,177 Finland 983 Norway 706.
Freedom is indeed important. But the temporary (and honestly very slight) limits on freedom we suffered were really as nothing compared to the rather more serious curtailment of freedom that results from being dead.
The premise you put forth of a choice between lockdown and death is utterly spurious.
Evidence mounts every month that lockdowns actually caused the deaths of people who were at no risk from covid whatever, so much so even the Telegraph admitted the other day the cure may have been more deadly than the disease.
"Even the Telegraph admitted..."
In an article that sparked all of this because it was a pile of crap and based on "We don't like lockdowns so the excess deaths must have been lockdowns."
Whilst a far better analysis with far more work came up with the actual answer.
Bringing up the other side of the ledger really is uncomfortable for you, isn't it Andy?
Lockdowns kill people who would have survived covid. Suicides, missed medical diagnoses, upsurges in obesity due to inactivity, poverty caused by incurring crushing debt paying people to do nothing. Many more have their life chances ruined.
Deal with it.
Yes, a great pity there wasn't a pain-free costless way to deal with the pandemic.
Ah well. Nice for all the little children to pretend there might have been.
Lockdown zealots are the people who pretended that there was, and it was called lockdown.
Not me guv. I argued against some of the rules, eg the brutal care home regime and the micro managing of household behaviour, I argued for more guidance and less law, and I argued for the Great Unlock of 2021 to be a deal swifter.
There's plenty of debate to be had around all this. But not on the fact that we had to enforce distancing between people at critical times to manage the pandemic. Denial of this - whether to troll or due to lack of understanding - is not respectable.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
Labours is more opinion poll savvy though, in giving the energy fat cats another kicking.
Even if it feels wrong, and has consequences, if the voters lay that as terms for their support, you have to get kicking?
This is the danger for the incoming Lizistration - do the right things to your principles (taxes are far too high) but still hammered by the voters as it’s not all they want isn’t it?
The primary concern is 'can i pay my bills?' And 'are the govt protecting me and helping me in that?' Who pays longer term is a longer term issue
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation.
If only there had been some way of temporarily partitioning the country between loonies and sane people, the loonies could have done just as they liked.
Unfortunately, most of the country, like most of the world, went mad simultaneously.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Nationalisation in this situation as Gordon Brown pushed for is so stupid, the crisis coming here is finding and getting money to those most in need, nationalisation will be using that money where it’s not needed, buying stuff we don’t need.
Richard Tyndall is right, squeeze to find where the lean point is, leave any fat in the system (like news reports of number profits, dividends, pay and bonuses) whilst people freeze and starve lose business and homes is both politically toxic and a bit immoral.
If Truss is only planning a fiscal event in September, then either the new regime is misreading the situation entirely, or the tax cut is going to be much more comprehensive than expected...??
Oh yeah, tax cuts and a £100b energy package debt.
Nothing to see, move along.
I still think Truss will try to cushion the blow without handouts.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
I don't favour nationalisation. As always I think Governments are almost uniquely bad at planning and investment for the future. But at the same time I don't think any company has a right to make a profit at the expense of the lives and welfare of its customers in a time of crisis. Let them have a few lean years after the profits they have made in the past.
Perhaps limiting the lean years to existing assets only so as to avoid stopping development?
Turning the 'Green Tax' into a debt repayment seems like a reasonable plan but we'd still need to reduce the immediate demand.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
I don't favour nationalisation. As always I think Governments are almost uniquely bad at planning and investment for the future. But at the same time I don't think any company has a right to make a profit at the expense of the lives and welfare of its customers in a time of crisis. Let them have a few lean years after the profits they have made in the past.
I'm also not in favour of windfall taxes nor caps, but there are times when you have to say it is necessary.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Yes, thats the question for every option currently on the table
Which is why it is so alarming that we don't have any idea which options, if any, the government are considering at this moment in time.
What we need is three or four options, carefully considered and analysed for their impact on consumers, the economy and the national infrastructure.
What we will get is the government plumping for any old half-arsed solution that's presented to them on the table by whoever happens to be in the room at the time this develops into a full blown crisis.
If Truss is only planning a fiscal event in September, then either the new regime is misreading the situation entirely, or the tax cut is going to be much more comprehensive than expected...??
Oh yeah, tax cuts and a £100b energy package debt.
Nothing to see, move along.
I still think Truss will try to cushion the blow without handouts.
Massive cut in fuel duty? Abolish fuel duty?
I don't want to sound like George Osborne because his analogy was a poor one, but nonetheless "the nation's credit cards are maxed out".
Edit. On your last paragraph we've also lost our job (means of income).
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Neighbours, schmeighbours. Sweden IIRC outperformed many, most if not all other countries, from memory. In particular wrt excess deaths:
Did it do worse than its immediate neighbours? Depends. It did better than Denmark (which has a very high population density) but worse than Norway (which has a comparatively tiny population density).
imo weighed the balances well and overall I have no doubt will experience fewer post-covid problems, undiagnosed illnesses, mental health issues.
And that's to say nothing of the freedom issue which you seem to dismiss, you of all people, as being of little or no import.
It did worse than Denmark.
Deaths per 1 million population
(UK 2,724) For reference Sweden 1,920 Denmark 1,177 Finland 983 Norway 706.
Freedom is indeed important. But the temporary (and honestly very slight) limits on freedom we suffered were really as nothing compared to the rather more serious curtailment of freedom that results from being dead.
The premise you put forth of a choice between lockdown and death is utterly spurious.
Evidence mounts every month that lockdowns actually caused the deaths of people who were at no risk from covid whatever, so much so even the Telegraph admitted the other day the cure may have been more deadly than the disease.
"Even the Telegraph admitted..."
In an article that sparked all of this because it was a pile of crap and based on "We don't like lockdowns so the excess deaths must have been lockdowns."
Whilst a far better analysis with far more work came up with the actual answer.
Bringing up the other side of the ledger really is uncomfortable for you, isn't it Andy?
Lockdowns kill people who would have survived covid. Suicides, missed medical diagnoses, upsurges in obesity due to inactivity, poverty caused by incurring crushing debt paying people to do nothing. Many more have their life chances ruined.
Deal with it.
Yes, a great pity there wasn't a pain-free costless way to deal with the pandemic.
Ah well. Nice for all the little children to pretend there might have been.
Lockdown zealots are the people who pretended that there was, and it was called lockdown.
Not me guv. I argued against some of the rules, eg the brutal care home regime and the micro managing of household behaviour, I argued for more guidance and less law, and I argued for the Great Unlock of 2021 to be a deal swifter.
There's plenty of debate to be had around all this. But not on the fact that we had to enforce distancing between people at critical times to manage the pandemic. Denial of this - whether to troll or due to lack of understanding - is not respectable.
The problem with the bit in bold is that according to the "experts", all times were "critical times".
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
If Truss is only planning a fiscal event in September, then either the new regime is misreading the situation entirely, or the tax cut is going to be much more comprehensive than expected...??
Oh yeah, tax cuts and a £100b energy package debt.
Nothing to see, move along.
I still think Truss will try to cushion the blow without handouts.
Massive cut in fuel duty? Abolish fuel duty?
What has fuel duty got to do with the price of electricity?
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation.
If only there had been some way of temporarily partitioning the country between loonies and sane people, the loonies could have done just as they liked.
Well the loonies like you and the other "independent SAGE" backing looks could have kept yourselves at home while the rest of us got on with our lives.
It is the price we need to pay to stand up to Putin and his aggression. Compromise with Putin to get more gas is not the answer and a savage recession now would do nothing for future generations either.
The last debt from WWII was only paid off in 2006.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Yes, thats the question for every option currently on the table
Which is why it is so alarming that we don't have any idea which options, if any, the government are considering at this moment in time.
What we need is three or four options, carefully considered and analysed for their impact on consumers, the economy and the national infrastructure.
What we will get is the government plumping for any old half-arsed solution that's presented to them on the table by whoever happens to be in the room at the time this develops into a full blown crisis.
We will soon see what is proposed. The government is there to govern and be judged on what they do or don't do, not continually provide a suite of options imo.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Yes, thats the question for every option currently on the table
This plan involves putting up £100bn from a government who don't possess net assets of £100 let alone £100bn. They possess net assets of minus £2trillion.
As there is no plan to pay back the £2 trillion, why should I believe there is a plan to pay back the extra £100bn the government borrow to pay our bills.
If the government had paid back the debt they incurred from Mr Brown's managed bank failure years ago I could believe this scheme. They didn't and I don't.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
Because you haven't established a principle that ministers can abolish civil liberties at a stroke of a pen. You also keep away from people focusing on the minutiae of the rules instead of the more fundamental question: essentially, "is your journey really necessary?".
The latter is a moot question, people were already responding to the necessary extent as was clear in the data.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation.
If only there had been some way of temporarily partitioning the country between loonies and sane people, the loonies could have done just as they liked.
Well the loonies like you and the other "independent SAGE" backing looks could have kept yourselves at home while the rest of us got on with our lives.
Got on with your life? You were on PB all day, everyday.
Lefty Labour MP dissing Starmer here, showing how disunited Labour still are.
Words to cheer Big Johns owls up
“Foy said she had no particular cause to socialise with Starmer. She is a member of the leftwing Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, often at odds with Starmer’s leadership. “To be quite frank I’d only met Keir once before,” she said. “There was no way that there was any real chit-chat. Because we didn’t really know each other.”
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
It's just one example which immediately springs to mind because it has a negative impact on me most weeks.
Surely you can see that "the trades unions made us do it" is a lame excuse. It was an England-only piece of legislation which the SNP effectively vetoed.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Neighbours, schmeighbours. Sweden IIRC outperformed many, most if not all other countries, from memory. In particular wrt excess deaths:
Did it do worse than its immediate neighbours? Depends. It did better than Denmark (which has a very high population density) but worse than Norway (which has a comparatively tiny population density).
imo weighed the balances well and overall I have no doubt will experience fewer post-covid problems, undiagnosed illnesses, mental health issues.
And that's to say nothing of the freedom issue which you seem to dismiss, you of all people, as being of little or no import.
It did worse than Denmark.
Deaths per 1 million population
(UK 2,724) For reference Sweden 1,920 Denmark 1,177 Finland 983 Norway 706.
Freedom is indeed important. But the temporary (and honestly very slight) limits on freedom we suffered were really as nothing compared to the rather more serious curtailment of freedom that results from being dead.
The premise you put forth of a choice between lockdown and death is utterly spurious.
Evidence mounts every month that lockdowns actually caused the deaths of people who were at no risk from covid whatever, so much so even the Telegraph admitted the other day the cure may have been more deadly than the disease.
"Even the Telegraph admitted..."
In an article that sparked all of this because it was a pile of crap and based on "We don't like lockdowns so the excess deaths must have been lockdowns."
Whilst a far better analysis with far more work came up with the actual answer.
Bringing up the other side of the ledger really is uncomfortable for you, isn't it Andy?
Lockdowns kill people who would have survived covid. Suicides, missed medical diagnoses, upsurges in obesity due to inactivity, poverty caused by incurring crushing debt paying people to do nothing. Many more have their life chances ruined.
Deal with it.
Yes, a great pity there wasn't a pain-free costless way to deal with the pandemic.
Ah well. Nice for all the little children to pretend there might have been.
Lockdown zealots are the people who pretended that there was, and it was called lockdown.
Not me guv. I argued against some of the rules, eg the brutal care home regime and the micro managing of household behaviour, I argued for more guidance and less law, and I argued for the Great Unlock of 2021 to be a deal swifter.
There's plenty of debate to be had around all this. But not on the fact that we had to enforce distancing between people at critical times to manage the pandemic. Denial of this - whether to troll or due to lack of understanding - is not respectable.
The problem with the bit in bold is that according to the "experts", all times were "critical times".
You're sounding like Lawrence Fox now. And I'm not going to pretend to be a Lockdown Zealot just to balance things up.
My point was and is that lockdowns of some sort at certain times were necessary to manage the pandemic. I hold this truth to be self-evident.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation.
If only there had been some way of temporarily partitioning the country between loonies and sane people, the loonies could have done just as they liked.
Well the loonies like you and the other "independent SAGE" backing looks could have kept yourselves at home while the rest of us got on with our lives.
Got on with your life? You were on PB all day, everyday.
Not that it is any of my business. Just saying.
To be fair most of us probably spend too much time on here. But I didn't spend as much time on here pre lockdown so the two might be related. Oh and to do an anti -Leon, I don't smoke, don't take smoke breaks, don't take drugs etc so if this and coffee are my vices it's not the worst in the world.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Yes, thats the question for every option currently on the table
This plan involves putting up £100bn from a government who don't possess net assets of £100 let alone £100bn. They possess net assets of minus £2trillion.
As there is no plan to pay back the £2 trillion, why should I believe there is a plan to pay back the extra £100bn the government borrow to pay our bills.
If the government had paid back the debt they incurred from Mr Brown's managed bank failure years ago I could believe this scheme. They didn't and I don't.
Smoke and mirrors as ever i expect. Does it stop a rash of people freezing to death this winter is the primary metric.
Lefty Labour MP dissing Starmer here, showing how disunited Labour still are.
Words to cheer Big Johns owls up
“Foy said she had no particular cause to socialise with Starmer. She is a member of the leftwing Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, often at odds with Starmer’s leadership. “To be quite frank I’d only met Keir once before,” she said. “There was no way that there was any real chit-chat. Because we didn’t really know each other.”
Lefty Labour MP dissing Starmer here, showing how disunited Labour still are.
Words to cheer Big Johns owls up
“Foy said she had no particular cause to socialise with Starmer. She is a member of the leftwing Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, often at odds with Starmer’s leadership. “To be quite frank I’d only met Keir once before,” she said. “There was no way that there was any real chit-chat. Because we didn’t really know each other.”
I don't think the story is Partygate, more Watergate. Durham police should be investing the burglary. An unusual request, investigating burglaries these days, granted.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
It's just one example which immediately springs to mind because it has a negative impact on me most weeks.
Surely you can see that "the trades unions made us do it" is a lame excuse. It was an England-only piece of legislation which the SNP effectively vetoed.
Wait till you hear how English mps vetoed amendments to the Scotland Act.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
Don't forget Down! Down is more Protestant than Antrim, per the 2011 Census.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Nationalisation in this situation as Gordon Brown pushed for is so stupid, the crisis coming here is finding and getting money to those most in need, nationalisation will be using that money where it’s not needed, buying stuff we don’t need.
Richard Tyndall is right, squeeze to find where the lean point is, leave any fat in the system (like news reports of number profits, dividends, pay and bonuses) whilst people freeze and starve lose business and homes is both politically toxic and a bit immoral.
I am inclined towards what TSE was saying downthread, that there is a serious risk of general strike and civil disorder next year if the government do not get a handle on this. I'm not sure "trimming the fat in the system" is going to cover it.
My natural instincts are libertarian ones, however I believe the government has a duty to defends its citizens in times of war. Not just with the army, however.
Russia has weaponised energy against us in a proxy war. It is their intention to turn the screws as much as possible, to weaken our resolve against their invasion of Ukraine, and create precisely the kind of civil unrest that has been warned about downthread.
As far as I'm concerned, that means greater government intervention is morally justifiable in this particular circumstance.
It needs to be about more than just preventing pensioners from freezing to death and giving a few handouts here and there. We need to ensure an energy supply that is affordable for all this winter - and that may mean looking at radical solutions such as nationalisation to control prices, furloughing energy intensive industries, and scheduling rolling blackouts to control demand.
The alternative is bankrupting hundreds of thousands of businesses, mass unemployment, strikes and civil unrest.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
Lefty Labour MP dissing Starmer here, showing how disunited Labour still are.
Words to cheer Big Johns owls up
“Foy said she had no particular cause to socialise with Starmer. She is a member of the leftwing Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, often at odds with Starmer’s leadership. “To be quite frank I’d only met Keir once before,” she said. “There was no way that there was any real chit-chat. Because we didn’t really know each other.”
I don't think the story is Partygate, more Watergate. Durham police should be investing the burglary. An unusual request, investigating burglaries these days, granted.
I'm sure they will give them a crime number for the insurance claim and then file the investigation in the round file, and Durham are one of the better forces in the UK.
Whichever solution you opt for, that's going to happen, because taxes are the highest in 70 years already.
Where do you for money otherwise?
Don’t make the inflation and debt problems worse by cutting taxes so soon is the obvious answer. Fantasy economics, ex Tory Chancellors are calling it. You need to ask yourself, if you are bothered by the highest tax take in 70 years, then don’t allow Labour governments in to put them up there when the sun was shining.
It’s like formula one now from here, you have to be on the right set of tyres for the situation, and this situation screams “don’t cut taxes just yet.”
Lady Thatcher wouldn’t have done right now, and she proved it by being elected as a low tax Conservative, and then soon putting taxes up as that was the correct set of tyres to be on at that moment. All this is true isn’t it?
FWIW - Without serious government intervention our Economic Intelligence Unit - Behavioural Team are saying the chances of a general strike and violence aren't insignificant in the next 12 months.
People don't riot in winter, but I forsee quite a wave of strikes this autumn. I see the Red Funnel have now settled.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
It's just one example which immediately springs to mind because it has a negative impact on me most weeks.
Surely you can see that "the trades unions made us do it" is a lame excuse. It was an England-only piece of legislation which the SNP effectively vetoed.
Wait till you hear how English mps vetoed amendments to the Scotland Act.
None of the parties which have MPs for English constituencies, so far as I'm, aware, make a virtue of not voting on legislation which does not apply to England.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Can I please try those rather fetching rose-tinted beer googles?
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Ah, so age discrimination. Good luck with that.
Even without the usual problem with any tax that raising tax always generates less than expected, plus would be in this case too slow to make any difference.
And the usual problem with property taxes: property wealth doesn't correlate with liquidity.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Can I please try those rather fetching rose-tinted beer googles?
Truss hasn't be involved until now. Keith Anderson proposed this to Sunak back in April iirc. It was turned down.
Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken.
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Can I please try those rather fetching rose-tinted beer googles?
Truss hasn't be involved until now. Keith Anderson proposed this to Sunak back in April iirc. It was turned down.
FWIW - Without serious government intervention our Economic Intelligence Unit - Behavioural Team are saying the chances of a general strike and violence aren't insignificant in the next 12 months.
People don't riot in winter, but I forsee quite a wave of strikes this autumn. I see the Red Funnel have now settled.
I was going to say why don’t people riot in winter? You can burn things to keep warm, and most rioting uses cover of darkness in winter you have so much more of it.
The key reason Sweden did better during the pandemic is little to do with population density or that we are incorrigibly anti-social.
It is to to with the independence of government agencies and the innate respect that most of the population has for the state, regional and local governments and other public agencies.
On the schools point, it was only children 15+ who were, relatively briefly, prohibited from attending school physically. Children suffered *much* less than in the rest of Europe. That we favour our young over our old is one of the greatest triumphs, and the greatest tragedies, of modern Swedish society.
You didn't do better. Compared to your neighbours you did far worse. Now extremists like Bart - typical of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing - seem to think this was a price worth paying but most reasonable people would disagree with him.
Neighbours, schmeighbours. Sweden IIRC outperformed many, most if not all other countries, from memory. In particular wrt excess deaths:
Did it do worse than its immediate neighbours? Depends. It did better than Denmark (which has a very high population density) but worse than Norway (which has a comparatively tiny population density).
imo weighed the balances well and overall I have no doubt will experience fewer post-covid problems, undiagnosed illnesses, mental health issues.
And that's to say nothing of the freedom issue which you seem to dismiss, you of all people, as being of little or no import.
It did worse than Denmark.
Deaths per 1 million population
(UK 2,724) For reference Sweden 1,920 Denmark 1,177 Finland 983 Norway 706.
Freedom is indeed important. But the temporary (and honestly very slight) limits on freedom we suffered were really as nothing compared to the rather more serious curtailment of freedom that results from being dead.
The premise you put forth of a choice between lockdown and death is utterly spurious.
Evidence mounts every month that lockdowns actually caused the deaths of people who were at no risk from covid whatever, so much so even the Telegraph admitted the other day the cure may have been more deadly than the disease.
"Even the Telegraph admitted..."
In an article that sparked all of this because it was a pile of crap and based on "We don't like lockdowns so the excess deaths must have been lockdowns."
Whilst a far better analysis with far more work came up with the actual answer.
Bringing up the other side of the ledger really is uncomfortable for you, isn't it Andy?
Lockdowns kill people who would have survived covid. Suicides, missed medical diagnoses, upsurges in obesity due to inactivity, poverty caused by incurring crushing debt paying people to do nothing. Many more have their life chances ruined.
Deal with it.
Yes, a great pity there wasn't a pain-free costless way to deal with the pandemic.
Ah well. Nice for all the little children to pretend there might have been.
Lockdown zealots are the people who pretended that there was, and it was called lockdown.
Not me guv. I argued against some of the rules, eg the brutal care home regime and the micro managing of household behaviour, I argued for more guidance and less law, and I argued for the Great Unlock of 2021 to be a deal swifter.
There's plenty of debate to be had around all this. But not on the fact that we had to enforce distancing between people at critical times to manage the pandemic. Denial of this - whether to troll or due to lack of understanding - is not respectable.
The problem with the bit in bold is that according to the "experts", all times were "critical times".
You're sounding like Lawrence Fox now. And I'm not going to pretend to be a Lockdown Zealot just to balance things up.
My point was and is that lockdowns of some sort at certain times were necessary to manage the pandemic. I hold this truth to be self-evident.
There's an interesting question around whether asking nicely could have been sufficiently effective. But of course, if it was sufficiently effective then actually the lives of most people would have been pretty similar*, just voluntarily so, so most of the costs** would have been the same.
*with some possible variations. People might have said sod it, I'm meeting my mate in the garden for a distanced drink/I'm going on walk outside with my mum, not getting too close - things that would have made lives better and been pretty low risk - i.e. they might have self-restricted in ways that were more effective than what was proscribed by law, but early on there wasn't really the information for people to make that choice, so voluntary behaviour would likely have followed guidance, largely. ** there's another question around whether a small minority disregarding guidance because they really had e.g. a mental health need to go and see someone else in person would have made much difference, but then we did have support bubbles and the like. In some cases the normal things that people need, like going to the office and seeing people, going to the pub, playing team sports etc would require a large group of people to decide to ignore the guidance, which, if it did happen, would have tended to reduce effectiveness
This is yesterdays that keeps getting posted, for comedic/sanitary effect?
Arn’t we expecting Techne - had Tories on 35 last time? And Kantor with just 4% gap last time, due too?
Techne didnt release their tracker on Friday for some reason. Kantar is due imminently
I bet LAB are ahead in those polls!
DYOR 👍
I think you may be correct
Kantor tends to report lower Lab totals and smaller gap between the parties, normally in same ball park as Opinium swingback. A five or even six gap, like 33-39, from Kantor would be very good for Labour. Though still probably wake BJO from his slumber 🙂
We have a red wall poll at 5. That was 15 points lead last time
If this movement in the polls starts to look uniform, the mainstream media may latch on to it, start heaping pressure on to the Tories about urgency for details and announcements?
Tory MPs may come on and blame too much blue on blue for the poll slump - but the truth maybe the country is listening for something positive for them, and keen on government action, and not getting it?
It is frustrating and annoying but only a couple of weeks now before PM Truss and her proposals made public
Maybe not, I understand the “special fiscal event” is October and devoid of usual OBR costing for us to know true implications short and long term - though I agree, to try to get from the coronation to the “this is not a crisis budget” a month later without action or even much detail will be politically courageous and the polling will show as much.
I really do not know where you get the October date
The emergency budget is due on the 21st September and has been mentioned several tines and even on Sky today
Whichever solution you opt for, that's going to happen, because taxes are the highest in 70 years already.
Where do you for money otherwise?
Don’t make the inflation and debt problems worse by cutting taxes so soon is the obvious answer. Fantasy economics, ex Tory Chancellors are calling it. You need to ask yourself, if you are bothered by the highest tax take in 70 years, then don’t allow Labour governments in to put them up there when the sun was shining.
It’s like formula one now from here, you have to be on the right set of tyres for the situation, and this situation screams “don’t cut taxes just yet.”
Lady Thatcher wouldn’t have done right now, and she proved it by being elected as a low tax Conservative, and then soon putting taxes up as that was the correct set of tyres to be on at that moment. All this is true isn’t it?
Look at the data though. The economy is tipping into recession. The budget data showed that, even as things are, Sunak's tax increases are not getting the revenues he expects. No sir.
Lets say the shortfall continues, or gets worse as the economy swan dives. Where the f8ck does Sunak go after that? The highest taxes in 100 years? 200? 500? the return of serfdom? Corbynite confiscation? Massive public spending cuts? IMF?
Sunak's policies have got us where we are. The worst outlook in decades. It seems to me all we need from him and his supporters is a period of silence and reflection. They are wrong. Sit down.
This is yesterdays that keeps getting posted, for comedic/sanitary effect?
Arn’t we expecting Techne - had Tories on 35 last time? And Kantor with just 4% gap last time, due too?
Techne didnt release their tracker on Friday for some reason. Kantar is due imminently
I bet LAB are ahead in those polls!
DYOR 👍
I think you may be correct
Kantor tends to report lower Lab totals and smaller gap between the parties, normally in same ball park as Opinium swingback. A five or even six gap, like 33-39, from Kantor would be very good for Labour. Though still probably wake BJO from his slumber 🙂
We have a red wall poll at 5. That was 15 points lead last time
If this movement in the polls starts to look uniform, the mainstream media may latch on to it, start heaping pressure on to the Tories about urgency for details and announcements?
Tory MPs may come on and blame too much blue on blue for the poll slump - but the truth maybe the country is listening for something positive for them, and keen on government action, and not getting it?
It is frustrating and annoying but only a couple of weeks now before PM Truss and her proposals made public
Maybe not, I understand the “special fiscal event” is October and devoid of usual OBR costing for us to know true implications short and long term - though I agree, to try to get from the coronation to the “this is not a crisis budget” a month later without action or even much detail will be politically courageous and the polling will show as much.
I really do not know where you get the October date
The emergency budget is due on the 21st September and has been mentioned several tines and even on Sky today
Maybe they will need to have another Budget in October if the September one turns out to be useless!
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
It's just one example which immediately springs to mind because it has a negative impact on me most weeks.
Surely you can see that "the trades unions made us do it" is a lame excuse. It was an England-only piece of legislation which the SNP effectively vetoed.
Wait till you hear how English mps vetoed amendments to the Scotland Act.
None of the parties which have MPs for English constituencies, so far as I'm, aware, make a virtue of not voting on legislation which does not apply to England.
The Cons seemed full of virtuous excitement over EVEL but that soon fell by the wayside.
Dear god, this shooting in Liverpool - just reading the details. It feels worse that there was no connection to the shooter or intended victim (which it isn't really of course - a 9 year old can't be involved in any meaningful way anyway and is completely innocent even if a parent was mixed up with the wrong people) probably because that means it could have happened to any of our children.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Nationalisation in this situation as Gordon Brown pushed for is so stupid, the crisis coming here is finding and getting money to those most in need, nationalisation will be using that money where it’s not needed, buying stuff we don’t need.
Richard Tyndall is right, squeeze to find where the lean point is, leave any fat in the system (like news reports of number profits, dividends, pay and bonuses) whilst people freeze and starve lose business and homes is both politically toxic and a bit immoral.
I am inclined towards what TSE was saying downthread, that there is a serious risk of general strike and civil disorder next year if the government do not get a handle on this. I'm not sure "trimming the fat in the system" is going to cover it.
My natural instincts are libertarian ones, however I believe the government has a duty to defends its citizens in times of war. Not just with the army, however.
Russia has weaponised energy against us in a proxy war. It is their intention to turn the screws as much as possible, to weaken our resolve against their invasion of Ukraine, and create precisely the kind of civil unrest that has been warned about downthread.
As far as I'm concerned, that means greater government intervention is morally justifiable in this particular circumstance.
It needs to be about more than just preventing pensioners from freezing to death and giving a few handouts here and there. We need to ensure an energy supply that is affordable for all this winter - and that may mean looking at radical solutions such as nationalisation to control prices, furloughing energy intensive industries, and scheduling rolling blackouts to control demand.
The alternative is bankrupting hundreds of thousands of businesses, mass unemployment, strikes and civil unrest.
I think the penny is dropping right across the board isn’t it - this is just not the moment to find the money for tax cuts. Hence the mood you describe, Tax cuts the solution promised by government, so they drop like stone in the polls, as 97.7% of electorate know it’s not the right moment for those policies. There is a right time for such policies and determination. But this is not that moment.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
Whatever Truss does Labour can say it was too late .
By the time she does anything people were already reducing spending amid concerns about how they’d pay their bills.
They can only say that if it is too late.
I hope Labour learn from the improved polling they've received that it benefits them to actually have policies on things. Good Governments require good oppositions, and the utterly cynical strategy of not having any policies has imo backfired on Labour massively. If you genuinely give a shit, you're not going to be concerned about your policies being stolen, you'll be pleased that you're setting the agenda.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
It's just one example which immediately springs to mind because it has a negative impact on me most weeks.
Surely you can see that "the trades unions made us do it" is a lame excuse. It was an England-only piece of legislation which the SNP effectively vetoed.
Wait till you hear how English mps vetoed amendments to the Scotland Act.
None of the parties which have MPs for English constituencies, so far as I'm, aware, make a virtue of not voting on legislation which does not apply to England.
The Cons seemed full of virtuous excitement over EVEL but that soon fell by the wayside.
If EVEL had been implemented properly, it might have been worth it.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
If the Tories win most seats in a hung parliament but Labour + the SNP combined have a majority Starmer would almost certainly offer the SNP indyref2 in return for making him PM and voting on English laws. The chances of the SNP rejecting a potential offer from the UK government for indyref2 is about 0
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
You are back on with your old inheritance mumbo- jumbo again.
Anyone who goes into a care home for any length of time, really has nothing much to leave. I can show you the bills and a total lack of interest from Herefordshire Council if you like.
Interesting analysis by @ShippersUnbound@thetimes on state of the Union. IMO what shld most alarm Unionists throughout UK is English indifference: 42% in 🏴 wld welcome or aren't bothered by 🏴 separation, goes up to 55% re Irish unification @YouGov
Yet only 1 in 7 English voters want Scotland to leave the UK and by a 17% margin English voters would be upset not pleased if Northern Ireland left the UK. Despite England still being the only home nation in the UK without its own parliament.
In any case unless the whole UK gets a vote on the Union in a referendum or England votes for the English Democrats and ultimately English independence, English voters get no say on the Union anyway
England does have its own Parliament. The one at Westminster. It is the old English Pmt with assorted others added and subtracted at various times. And until your very own glorious Party recently deleted the legislation for reasons which remain completely unclear, it had English votes for English laws.
The reason was completely clear: EVEL as implemented was bollocks, as a majority of MPs representing English constituencies couldn't implement something if there was a UK majority against it.
The idea that the Westminster parliament is an English parliament is risible.
Surely the whole point of EVEL was to remove the question of a UK majority by making sure the non-English MPs couldn't vote.
This was much touted by Mr Cameron as a solution to devolution's anomalies.
If there is a Labour minority government at the next election propped up by the SNP, Starmer could well offer the SNP indyref2 in return for voting on English laws if the Tories still have most seats in England but no majority in the UK
Like everyone else, you're missing what would happen before then. The situation would be too chaotic to get that far.
And the deletion of EVEL means that that isn't even an offer, not least because the SNP don't vote on English laws*.
*Except in aberrant cases, which EVEL eliminates - or would if the Tories hadn't cancelled it to give themselves the kind of girevance you are so assiduously repeating.
No it wouldn't, Starmer just does a written deal with the SNP for indyref2 in return for SNP votes on English laws as May did a deal with the DUP in 2017. Starmer then enters No 10 to lead a minority government propped up by the SNP for a majority in a hung parliament.
The SNP would vote on English laws in return for indyref2, guaranteed
Projecting your views on the enemy. You think it fair to override other people's votes and parliaments, so of course you assume the 'enemy' are as bad.
Given that the SNP has form for voting on English laws (for instance, we have them to thank for having to carefully plan our Sunday supermarket trips every week)...
That was because of cross-border consequentials, at the request of the Trade Unions, some presumably part of the Labour Party.
Excuses.
Notd excuses. Reasons as discussed amply at the time.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
Don't forget Down! Down is more Protestant than Antrim, per the 2011 Census.
On Unionist voteshare it isn't and every seat in county Antrim is DUP but not every seat in Down is DUP, ignoring Belfast
Whichever solution you opt for, that's going to happen, because taxes are the highest in 70 years already.
Where do you for money otherwise?
Don’t make the inflation and debt problems worse by cutting taxes so soon is the obvious answer. Fantasy economics, ex Tory Chancellors are calling it. You need to ask yourself, if you are bothered by the highest tax take in 70 years, then don’t allow Labour governments in to put them up there when the sun was shining.
It’s like formula one now from here, you have to be on the right set of tyres for the situation, and this situation screams “don’t cut taxes just yet.”
Lady Thatcher wouldn’t have done right now, and she proved it by being elected as a low tax Conservative, and then soon putting taxes up as that was the correct set of tyres to be on at that moment. All this is true isn’t it?
Look at the data though. The economy is tipping into recession. The budget data showed that, even as things are, Sunak's tax increases are not getting the revenues he expects. No sir.
Lets say the shortfall continues, or gets worse as the economy swan dives. Where the f8ck does Sunak go after that? The highest taxes in 100 years? 200? 500? the return of serfdom? Corbynite confiscation? Massive public spending cuts? IMF?
Sunak's policies have got us where we are. The worst outlook in decades. It seems to me all we need from him and his supporters is a period of silence and reflection. They are wrong. Sit down.
Yep. Not up to it. Lucrative career shilling for Facebook for one please. Don't stay in touch.
1. Diseases will always kill us and if they don't then I have bad news about life in any case. 2. I can totally understand that the government, looking as we all did at those pictures from Italy of people dying in the corridors, had to do something and lockdowns was it. 3. The whole point of society is a balance. Tragically it is not to keep every Archie alive at the expense of others who would benefit from those resources.
Once the NHS was in no danger of "collapsing" as in real collapse, not the collapse that the Graun and the various health unions call every other week, then there should absolutely have been no more lockdowns.
There should have been compensation for pubs if they wanted to close and teachers if they wanted to stay home but no mandate.
Our freedoms are so precious and the great and good of PB dismiss them instantly and soil themselves at the first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years. Doesn't bode well for the future.
Which is a greater threat to Freedom: a temporary measure in the face of a novel pandemic, or a sustained campaign by government to restrict political protest and dissent? Is the collapse of the Court system due to chronic neglect perhaps a more pernicious threat? Is the drive to ban freedom of speech under the guise of Fighting Wokery more problematic? Are restrictions on the right to strike actually more consequential? I think one can debate whether temporary lockdowns were really the "first real test of freedom that we in the UK have had for 80 years".
But, sure, lockdowns should be avoided. The way to avoid lockdowns is with better public health measures. We can look at a country like Japan that never had a national lockdown and had far fewer COVID cases. A better Test & Trace system, with more support for people self-isolating, would have been a huge help in the UK. A better funded primary health care system would have helped.
This ain't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, do public health better.
No, it isn't rocket science. If you don't want lockdowns, don't implement lockdowns.
How would you have hampered the spread of the virus at those critical times then?
It spread via close contact between people remember - not by black magic.
Strong advice, not legislation. And this would have included strong advice to organisations and companies to stop doing counterproductive things, like supermarkets cutting their hours, which merely ensured that the average number of people in their shops at any given time was higher than it needed to be.
Ok so Muscly goes "You MUST stay at home etc etc" but no laws are changed.
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
"Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse. "
We do not assume these measures are risk free.
Lockdown was presented to us, ad nauseam, as 'saving lives' in a huge propaganda campaign. We know now it was never that.
That's not down to you, I understand. You were not a part of that campaign.
Try rewriting that sentence with rises instead of cuts. Is this the time for tax rises?
Truss isn't proposing some massive swingeing tax cuts taking tax rates to unseen lows like 16% Income Tax as Sunak is proposing. She's advocating bring some taxes back to the same rate they were five months ago.
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
You are back on with your old inheritance mumbo- jumbo again.
Anyone who goes into a care home for any length of time, really has nothing much to leave. I can show you the bills and a total lack of interest from Herefordshire Council if you like.
Only 25% of over 65s at most will ever need to go into a care home, the rest will either die first or require only at home care. Plus the government has now capped care costs at £86k anyway
Whichever solution you opt for, that's going to happen, because taxes are the highest in 70 years already.
Where do you for money otherwise?
Don’t make the inflation and debt problems worse by cutting taxes so soon is the obvious answer. Fantasy economics, ex Tory Chancellors are calling it. You need to ask yourself, if you are bothered by the highest tax take in 70 years, then don’t allow Labour governments in to put them up there when the sun was shining.
It’s like formula one now from here, you have to be on the right set of tyres for the situation, and this situation screams “don’t cut taxes just yet.”
Lady Thatcher wouldn’t have done right now, and she proved it by being elected as a low tax Conservative, and then soon putting taxes up as that was the correct set of tyres to be on at that moment. All this is true isn’t it?
Look at the data though. The economy is tipping into recession. The budget data showed that, even as things are, Sunak's tax increases are not getting the revenues he expects. No sir.
Lets say the shortfall continues, or gets worse as the economy swan dives. Where the f8ck does Sunak go after that? The highest taxes in 100 years? 200? 500? the return of serfdom? Corbynite confiscation? Massive public spending cuts? IMF?
Sunak's policies have got us where we are. The worst outlook in decades. It seems to me all we need from him and his supporters is a period of silence and reflection. They are wrong. Sit down.
Yep. Not up to it. Lucrative career shilling for Facebook for one please. Don't stay in touch.
Ah, you mentioned 'shilling'. Which 'alternative' media are you licking the backside of today for your 'alternative' facts?
This is yesterdays that keeps getting posted, for comedic/sanitary effect?
Arn’t we expecting Techne - had Tories on 35 last time? And Kantor with just 4% gap last time, due too?
Techne didnt release their tracker on Friday for some reason. Kantar is due imminently
I bet LAB are ahead in those polls!
DYOR 👍
I think you may be correct
Kantor tends to report lower Lab totals and smaller gap between the parties, normally in same ball park as Opinium swingback. A five or even six gap, like 33-39, from Kantor would be very good for Labour. Though still probably wake BJO from his slumber 🙂
We have a red wall poll at 5. That was 15 points lead last time
If this movement in the polls starts to look uniform, the mainstream media may latch on to it, start heaping pressure on to the Tories about urgency for details and announcements?
Tory MPs may come on and blame too much blue on blue for the poll slump - but the truth maybe the country is listening for something positive for them, and keen on government action, and not getting it?
It is frustrating and annoying but only a couple of weeks now before PM Truss and her proposals made public
Maybe not, I understand the “special fiscal event” is October and devoid of usual OBR costing for us to know true implications short and long term - though I agree, to try to get from the coronation to the “this is not a crisis budget” a month later without action or even much detail will be politically courageous and the polling will show as much.
I really do not know where you get the October date
The emergency budget is due on the 21st September and has been mentioned several tines and even on Sky today
Maybe they will need to have another Budget in October if the September one turns out to be useless!
I think some of the confusion comes from whether Truss's finance "event" in Sept will be an actual Budget. iirc to be a Budget it needs the OBR to do the numbers which they can't by September. So I think we will get a financial statement in September followed by a Nov Budget.
This is yesterdays that keeps getting posted, for comedic/sanitary effect?
Arn’t we expecting Techne - had Tories on 35 last time? And Kantor with just 4% gap last time, due too?
Techne didnt release their tracker on Friday for some reason. Kantar is due imminently
I bet LAB are ahead in those polls!
DYOR 👍
I think you may be correct
Kantor tends to report lower Lab totals and smaller gap between the parties, normally in same ball park as Opinium swingback. A five or even six gap, like 33-39, from Kantor would be very good for Labour. Though still probably wake BJO from his slumber 🙂
We have a red wall poll at 5. That was 15 points lead last time
If this movement in the polls starts to look uniform, the mainstream media may latch on to it, start heaping pressure on to the Tories about urgency for details and announcements?
Tory MPs may come on and blame too much blue on blue for the poll slump - but the truth maybe the country is listening for something positive for them, and keen on government action, and not getting it?
It is frustrating and annoying but only a couple of weeks now before PM Truss and her proposals made public
Maybe not, I understand the “special fiscal event” is October and devoid of usual OBR costing for us to know true implications short and long term - though I agree, to try to get from the coronation to the “this is not a crisis budget” a month later without action or even much detail will be politically courageous and the polling will show as much.
I really do not know where you get the October date
The emergency budget is due on the 21st September and has been mentioned several tines and even on Sky today
Maybe they will need to have another Budget in October if the September one turns out to be useless!
I think some of the confusion comes from whether Truss's finance "event" in Sept will be an actual Budget. iirc to be a Budget it needs the OBR to do the numbers which they can't by September. So I think we will get a financial statement in September followed by a Nov Budget.
So basically she isn't going to do anything in September to solve the oncoming train wreck...
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
While tax on inheritance would be a fair way of helping in this crises I do not know of any party suggesting it
May suggested taxing all assets over £100k in 2017 to pay for care costs and lost her majority as a result with a swing away from the Tories from 2015 to 2017 amongst 45 to 65 year olds
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
You are back on with your old inheritance mumbo- jumbo again.
Anyone who goes into a care home for any length of time, really has nothing much to leave. I can show you the bills and a total lack of interest from Herefordshire Council if you like.
Only 25% of over 65s at most will ever need to go into a care home, the rest will either die first or require only at home care. Plus the government has now capped care costs at £86k anyway
Not yet it hasn't, if you know differently let me know.
October 2023 is not much f...ing use for my 94 year old Mother in law. Between now and then is going to cost her another £84,000.
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
Or we could have a new large special energy related extra IHT on those fortunate enough to have received inheritances!
You can live in a big property and not have a high income but high energy bills. It would be fairer to put up an energy tax on energy companies with big profits or those with the highest incomes
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
You are back on with your old inheritance mumbo- jumbo again.
Anyone who goes into a care home for any length of time, really has nothing much to leave. I can show you the bills and a total lack of interest from Herefordshire Council if you like.
Only 25% of over 65s at most will ever need to go into a care home, the rest will either die first or require only at home care. Plus the government has now capped care costs at £86k anyway
Not yet it hasn't, if you know differently let me know.
October 2023 is not much f...ing use for my 94 year old Mother in law. Between now and then is going to cost her another £84,000.
Anyone worked out how workable this is? (Though loading the costs on bill payers in the 2040s is very on-brand for a government that really doesn't give a stuff about anyone younger than about 60)
Energy firm’s £100 billion plan to freeze energy bills for 2 years. A thread The Chief Executive of one of the UK’s largest energy providers presented Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg with a £100 billion plan to stave off an energy price emergency last week... 2/ Keith Anderson, CEO of Scottish Power will present the same plan to Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today. The plan would involve the government guaranteeing loans to the energy companies enabling them to keep bills frozen while buying the gas needed.... 3/ ...for the next two years. £100 billion is Scottish Power’s best estimate of the difference between what it will actually cost to buy the energy and the current cap of £1971. Sources close to the company said that Kwasi Kwarteng, tipped to be the next Chancellor.... 4/ ..if Liz Truss is next PM, was broadly receptive to the idea. Sources close to Kwasi Kwarteng wouldn’t be drawn on his enthusiasm. “We had a meeting about it – that’s all”. The so called deficit fund would be repaid through bills over the next 20 or so years...
Kwarteng and Truss would be well advised to go for it, it dwarfs Labour's plan and probably leaves some room for the 400 quid direct help that Labour would remove.
In a my future generations' debt is bigger than your future generations' debt.
I suppose on a positive note with inflation running at 20% p a for the next twenty years the debt will have withered to nothing anyway.
Well the cost of not freezing everyone to death this winter will be hugely increased public debt. Thems the breaks. Labour are just proposing to do it in a series of depressing interventions rather than this option of more up front but over a longer period.
Yes, something has to be done and Liz and her Chancellor and Energy Minister have come up with a corker of a plan that shames Labour's meagre effort. But the figure...wow!
How have the energy companies - the big ones who actually supply energy I mean rather than the small ones that were just effectively trading futures - been doing the last few years?
Would it be viable to call their bluff? Or even possible?
Keep the energy cap where it is or even reduce it. Let the energy companies take the pain and see how much they can take and only then step in and introduce the support scheme when they are on the verge of going bust. It would ensure that they are actually doing all they can rather than just looking for a way to support their profits.
Should any energy company be doing more than getting by right now?
I am not actually advocating this as I am sure there are way too many flaws in my reasoning but just thought it was worth at least discussing.
The mere fact that it's the energy companies favoured solution suggests to me it requires precisely this kind of scrutiny.
One way or another, the taxpayer is going to be on the hook for a lot of debt - but how much of that should be going into energy suppliers profits?
Well this is the issue with Labours plan too isnt it? Its going to cost us tens of billions either way
I think the question is how many billions will be profits for the energy companies. When nationalisation means we could take those profits out of the equation.
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
Nationalisation in this situation as Gordon Brown pushed for is so stupid, the crisis coming here is finding and getting money to those most in need, nationalisation will be using that money where it’s not needed, buying stuff we don’t need.
Richard Tyndall is right, squeeze to find where the lean point is, leave any fat in the system (like news reports of number profits, dividends, pay and bonuses) whilst people freeze and starve lose business and homes is both politically toxic and a bit immoral.
I am inclined towards what TSE was saying downthread, that there is a serious risk of general strike and civil disorder next year if the government do not get a handle on this. I'm not sure "trimming the fat in the system" is going to cover it.
My natural instincts are libertarian ones, however I believe the government has a duty to defends its citizens in times of war. Not just with the army, however.
Russia has weaponised energy against us in a proxy war. It is their intention to turn the screws as much as possible, to weaken our resolve against their invasion of Ukraine, and create precisely the kind of civil unrest that has been warned about downthread.
As far as I'm concerned, that means greater government intervention is morally justifiable in this particular circumstance.
It needs to be about more than just preventing pensioners from freezing to death and giving a few handouts here and there. We need to ensure an energy supply that is affordable for all this winter - and that may mean looking at radical solutions such as nationalisation to control prices, furloughing energy intensive industries, and scheduling rolling blackouts to control demand.
The alternative is bankrupting hundreds of thousands of businesses, mass unemployment, strikes and civil unrest.
I think the penny is dropping right across the board isn’t it - this is just not the moment to find the money for tax cuts. Hence the mood you describe, Tax cuts the solution promised by government, so they drop like stone in the polls, as 97.7% of electorate know it’s not the right moment for those policies. There is a right time for such policies and determination. But this is not that moment.
Supply is down by 15% or so due to Russia. That means demand needs to drop by a similar amount.
Proposals like taking out a loan to freeze prices now, and paying that astronomical sum back over the next 20 years or so, don't fully solve the problem. There is simply only so much energy to go around. We can't keep bidding it up and up in a bidding war and putting it on the never never.
We need to start looking seriously at how to reduce demand this winter while keeping the economy alive - it's going to require substantial government intervention.
Keeping prices artificially low will only stimulate demand. Demand reduction is going to need to be part of the equation. It won't be popular, but ultimately difficult decisions need to be made during wartime, that's what a government is there for. And I would rather the government allocates available supply on a harm reduction basis (to both lives and the economy) than allow the free market to allocate energy to the highest bidder.
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
While tax on inheritance would be a fair way of helping in this crises I do not know of any party suggesting it
A wealth tax is not an unreasonable proposition.
Event though Galloway seems to think everyone about 55 is wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice and has mugged his generation off and all of us got free Uni tuition, this isn't the case.
However some form or wealth tax would only target those with wealth above a certain level and could be a useful implement to address so-called intergenerational unfairness. Wealthy pensioners with a 6 bed home in the home counties chip in, poor pensioners with a 2 up 2 down in Spennymoor don't
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
You are back on with your old inheritance mumbo- jumbo again.
Anyone who goes into a care home for any length of time, really has nothing much to leave. I can show you the bills and a total lack of interest from Herefordshire Council if you like.
Only 25% of over 65s at most will ever need to go into a care home, the rest will either die first or require only at home care. Plus the government has now capped care costs at £86k anyway
The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday afternoon at the request of Russia to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, where nearby fighting has raised the risk of a nuclear accident.
As opposed to your alternative, which obviously is...?
Huge property taxes on the wealthiest generations that squandered the family silver
Which would be hugely unpopular amongst 45 to 65 year olds who would inherit from them
While tax on inheritance would be a fair way of helping in this crises I do not know of any party suggesting it
May suggested taxing all assets over £100k in 2017 to pay for care costs and lost her majority as a result with a swing away from the Tories from 2015 to 2017 amongst 45 to 65 year olds
The conservatives are about to lose an 80 seat majority anyway
Comments
The energy companies are very keen on the "give us a big loan and we'll pay it off over the next 20 years with higher but manageable energy bills"
Is that the best deal for Joe Billpayer, or is it the best deal for the energy companies?
We'll be fine, we're not in the EU.
Even if it feels wrong, and has consequences, if the voters lay that as terms for their support, you have to get kicking?
This is the danger for the incoming Lizistration - do the right things to your principles (taxes are far too high) but still hammered by the voters as it’s not all they want isn’t it?
Nothing to see, move along.
There's plenty of debate to be had around all this. But not on the fact that we had to enforce distancing between people at critical times to manage the pandemic. Denial of this - whether to troll or due to lack of understanding - is not respectable.
Who pays longer term is a longer term issue
Richard Tyndall is right, squeeze to find where the lean point is, leave any fat in the system (like news reports of number profits, dividends, pay and bonuses) whilst people freeze and starve lose business and homes is both politically toxic and a bit immoral.
Massive cut in fuel duty? Abolish fuel duty?
Turning the 'Green Tax' into a debt repayment seems like a reasonable plan but we'd still need to reduce the immediate demand.
What we need is three or four options, carefully considered and analysed for their impact on consumers, the economy and the national infrastructure.
What we will get is the government plumping for any old half-arsed solution that's presented to them on the table by whoever happens to be in the room at the time this develops into a full blown crisis.
Edit. On your last paragraph we've also lost our job (means of income).
Why is that so much better iyo?
And what happens if people don't respond to the extent necessary to ward off a public health catastrophe?
Where do you for money otherwise?
The last debt from WWII was only paid off in 2006.
The fact you have to reach to a single and obscure piece of legislation shows the weakness of your argument, and HYUFD's. It would be a radical change of policy, for which there is zero evidence at present. It's projected fantasy on a par witdh the creation of a Free Antrim.
As there is no plan to pay back the £2 trillion, why should I believe there is a plan to pay back the extra £100bn the government borrow to pay our bills.
If the government had paid back the debt they incurred from Mr Brown's managed bank failure years ago I could believe this scheme. They didn't and I don't.
The latter is a moot question, people were already responding to the necessary extent as was clear in the data.
Not that it is any of my business. Just saying.
Words to cheer Big Johns owls up
“Foy said she had no particular cause to socialise with Starmer. She is a member of the leftwing Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, often at odds with Starmer’s leadership.
“To be quite frank I’d only met Keir once before,” she said. “There was no way that there was any real chit-chat. Because we didn’t really know each other.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/23/labour-mp-claims-reporter-broke-into-her-office-to-find-beergate-material
Surely you can see that "the trades unions made us do it" is a lame excuse. It was an England-only piece of legislation which the SNP effectively vetoed.
My point was and is that lockdowns of some sort at certain times were necessary to manage the pandemic. I hold this truth to be self-evident.
She's got a safe seat for life and has nothing really to offer the labour movement.
My natural instincts are libertarian ones, however I believe the government has a duty to defends its citizens in times of war. Not just with the army, however.
Russia has weaponised energy against us in a proxy war. It is their intention to turn the screws as much as possible, to weaken our resolve against their invasion of Ukraine, and create precisely the kind of civil unrest that has been warned about downthread.
As far as I'm concerned, that means greater government intervention is morally justifiable in this particular circumstance.
It needs to be about more than just preventing pensioners from freezing to death and giving a few handouts here and there. We need to ensure an energy supply that is affordable for all this winter - and that may mean looking at radical solutions such as nationalisation to control prices, furloughing energy intensive industries, and scheduling rolling blackouts to control demand.
The alternative is bankrupting hundreds of thousands of businesses, mass unemployment, strikes and civil unrest.
It isn't warding off anything, its just changing the emphasis of risk. You assume these measures, even short term, are risk free, but they aren't.
Every kind of restriction is a swings and roundabouts calculation. Not how it was presented at the time (it was 'saving lives'), but we now know that is true.
At best lockdown was sacrificing some lives to save others. At best. What's the balance? who knows?
It’s like formula one now from here, you have to be on the right set of tyres for the situation, and this situation screams “don’t cut taxes just yet.”
Lady Thatcher wouldn’t have done right now, and she proved it by being elected as a low tax Conservative, and then soon putting taxes up as that was the correct set of tyres to be on at that moment. All this is true isn’t it?
Oh and if it's a loan, then possibly not a handout either.
But the devil will be in the details of course. What's going to happen with SMEs will be as important as what happens with consumer bills and that doesn't seem to be getting discussed much yet if at all.
Even without the usual problem with any tax that raising tax always generates less than expected, plus would be in this case too slow to make any difference.
And the usual problem with property taxes: property wealth doesn't correlate with liquidity.
And I could go on.
"Lockdown is the result of a failure of public health policy. It is hugely damaging. And it is used when not locking down is worse. "
We do not assume these measures are risk free.
*with some possible variations. People might have said sod it, I'm meeting my mate in the garden for a distanced drink/I'm going on walk outside with my mum, not getting too close - things that would have made lives better and been pretty low risk - i.e. they might have self-restricted in ways that were more effective than what was proscribed by law, but early on there wasn't really the information for people to make that choice, so voluntary behaviour would likely have followed guidance, largely.
** there's another question around whether a small minority disregarding guidance because they really had e.g. a mental health need to go and see someone else in person would have made much difference, but then we did have support bubbles and the like. In some cases the normal things that people need, like going to the office and seeing people, going to the pub, playing team sports etc would require a large group of people to decide to ignore the guidance, which, if it did happen, would have tended to reduce effectiveness
By the time she does anything people were already reducing spending amid concerns about how they’d pay their bills.
The emergency budget is due on the 21st September and has been mentioned several tines and even on Sky today
Lets say the shortfall continues, or gets worse as the economy swan dives. Where the f8ck does Sunak go after that? The highest taxes in 100 years? 200? 500? the return of serfdom? Corbynite confiscation? Massive public spending cuts? IMF?
Sunak's policies have got us where we are. The worst outlook in decades. It seems to me all we need from him and his supporters is a period of silence and reflection. They are wrong. Sit down.
That's not down to you, I understand. You were not a part of that campaign.
I hope Labour learn from the improved polling they've received that it benefits them to actually have policies on things. Good Governments require good oppositions, and the utterly cynical strategy of not having any policies has imo backfired on Labour massively. If you genuinely give a shit, you're not going to be concerned about your policies being stolen, you'll be pleased that you're setting the agenda.
Anyone who goes into a care home for any length of time, really has nothing much to leave. I can show you the bills and a total lack of interest from Herefordshire Council if you like.
Truss isn't proposing some massive swingeing tax cuts taking tax rates to unseen lows like 16% Income Tax as Sunak is proposing. She's advocating bring some taxes back to the same rate they were five months ago.
Remember MH17.
October 2023 is not much f...ing use for my 94 year old Mother in law. Between now and then is going to cost her another £84,000.
Proposals like taking out a loan to freeze prices now, and paying that astronomical sum back over the next 20 years or so, don't fully solve the problem. There is simply only so much energy to go around. We can't keep bidding it up and up in a bidding war and putting it on the never never.
We need to start looking seriously at how to reduce demand this winter while keeping the economy alive - it's going to require substantial government intervention.
Keeping prices artificially low will only stimulate demand. Demand reduction is going to need to be part of the equation. It won't be popular, but ultimately difficult decisions need to be made during wartime, that's what a government is there for. And I would rather the government allocates available supply on a harm reduction basis (to both lives and the economy) than allow the free market to allocate energy to the highest bidder.
Event though Galloway seems to think everyone about 55 is wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice and has mugged his generation off and all of us got free Uni tuition, this isn't the case.
However some form or wealth tax would only target those with wealth above a certain level and could be a useful implement to address so-called intergenerational unfairness. Wealthy pensioners with a 6 bed home in the home counties chip in, poor pensioners with a 2 up 2 down in Spennymoor don't
NY Times