"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
Mrs T was a giant compared to Truss and also more politically savvy about what the average voter needed and also had not changed positions on key issues multiple times.
She was also lucky enough to be facing a failing Labour government, not be PM 12 years into a Tory government
Yes Mrs T was much more savvy about what voters needed. At times of hardship Mrs T imposed windfall taxes on those not suffering in order to redistribute to those who were. Straight away Truss failed the Mrs T test.
Also, Maggie could read a calendar.
If this is the right thing to do, the time to do it is in the sweet afterglow of a new electoral mandate.
Even if this works*, it's not going to work by autumn 2024. So proposing it now gets the political pain without the tax receipts. Nuts, and the sort of thing that you do if you read about Maggie without direct experience or understanding.
* By works, I'd go a bit wider than annual tax take. Does a bonus obsession encourage too much risk to be taken by bankers? I don't know, but it needs consideration.
Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.
Any major changes she wants to get done, that might not be politically appealing, now is the time. The politically appealing ones, those you can save up for the General Election year.
“ Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.‘
😆
This hasn’t been one of your better days Barty.
Less than 50% of the members of her own party voted for her. She just about pipped second in vote of her parties MPs.
She won, Sunak lost, that's the end of it. She won, she's new PM, and now is when she needs to get going on her agenda.
If you're not going to implement your agenda when you win and become Prime Minister, when will you?
This announcement you are defending, was it a promise during her campaign?
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
She's already Prime Minister. This is it, she made it to the top.
She may or may not win the next election, but she is already there now. She has a limited window to get done what she believes in and now is the time to start.
How many former Prime Ministers look back on their time in office afterwards and think "I wish I had been less bold?"
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with a CT cut (or rather non-rise) which nobody really feels, and reversing other tax rises like NI that haven’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
Got past forty pounds of tomatoes two days ago, three stone today, and closing in on twenty kilos. This is the last four days’ harvest. From three plants on a shelf
I’m cooking loads of diced pancetta to make a pasta sauce with them all
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
What's he moaning about, please? Paywalled. But I can't imagine what sense he could be making.
There aren't enough people coming to London anyway, we should be doubling and redoubling their numbers because safety and security and crowd management are for dickless socialist jobsworths.
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
Mrs T was a giant compared to Truss and also more politically savvy about what the average voter needed and also had not changed positions on key issues multiple times.
She was also lucky enough to be facing a failing Labour government, not be PM 12 years into a Tory government
Yes Mrs T was much more savvy about what voters needed. At times of hardship Mrs T imposed windfall taxes on those not suffering in order to redistribute to those who were. Straight away Truss failed the Mrs T test.
Also, Maggie could read a calendar.
If this is the right thing to do, the time to do it is in the sweet afterglow of a new electoral mandate.
Even if this works*, it's not going to work by autumn 2024. So proposing it now gets the political pain without the tax receipts. Nuts, and the sort of thing that you do if you read about Maggie without direct experience or understanding.
* By works, I'd go a bit wider than annual tax take. Does a bonus obsession encourage too much risk to be taken by bankers? I don't know, but it needs consideration.
Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.
Any major changes she wants to get done, that might not be politically appealing, now is the time. The politically appealing ones, those you can save up for the General Election year.
“ Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.‘
😆
This hasn’t been one of your better days Barty.
Less than 50% of the members of her own party voted for her. She just about pipped second in vote of her parties MPs.
She won, Sunak lost, that's the end of it. She won, she's new PM, and now is when she needs to get going on her agenda.
If you're not going to implement your agenda when you win and become Prime Minister, when will you?
This announcement you are defending, was it a promise during her campaign?
Challenging Treasury orthodoxy, being reformist and going for growth absolutely was a promise made during her campaign, yes.
She needs to pull out the stops and do that. That's what she was elected to do. If she does it and its unpopular she may not win a second term, if she doesn't do it having had the chance and its the right thing to do, she doesn't deserve a second term.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
How many former Prime Ministers look back on their time in office afterwards and think "I wish I had been less bold?"
Banks are terrible in this country for SME businesses. I think they all focus on blue chip to make cash tbh, personal banking is much of a muchness but they are absolutely fucking dire for medium size enterprises
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
What's he moaning about, please? Paywalled. But I can't imagine what sense he could be making.
A sensation most of us when we see his name in the byline.
I've never read his work, so am open-minded as to the gent. It was the idea of bowler-hatted Civil Servants defending Westminster Hall from intruders that puzzled me.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
What's he moaning about, please? Paywalled. But I can't imagine what sense he could be making.
There aren't enough people coming to London anyway, we should be doubling and redoubling their numbers because safety and security and crowd management are for dickless socialist jobsworths.
Ah, thanks. What is he, a devotee of mass sacrifice of the serfs at the time of the ruler's death?
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
There is a kind of consistency and logic in much of the policy agenda. They want us to be like the USA. Poor public infrastructure, high inequality but high growth and entrepreneurial opportunity.
Fair enough, but the UK isn’t the US with the continental scale market and labour force or its own vast energy and agricultural reserves. And the US spends billions upon billions of public money on its own industries.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
Mrs T was a giant compared to Truss and also more politically savvy about what the average voter needed and also had not changed positions on key issues multiple times.
She was also lucky enough to be facing a failing Labour government, not be PM 12 years into a Tory government
Yes Mrs T was much more savvy about what voters needed. At times of hardship Mrs T imposed windfall taxes on those not suffering in order to redistribute to those who were. Straight away Truss failed the Mrs T test.
Also, Maggie could read a calendar.
If this is the right thing to do, the time to do it is in the sweet afterglow of a new electoral mandate.
Even if this works*, it's not going to work by autumn 2024. So proposing it now gets the political pain without the tax receipts. Nuts, and the sort of thing that you do if you read about Maggie without direct experience or understanding.
* By works, I'd go a bit wider than annual tax take. Does a bonus obsession encourage too much risk to be taken by bankers? I don't know, but it needs consideration.
Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.
Any major changes she wants to get done, that might not be politically appealing, now is the time. The politically appealing ones, those you can save up for the General Election year.
“ Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.‘
😆
This hasn’t been one of your better days Barty.
Less than 50% of the members of her own party voted for her. She just about pipped second in vote of her parties MPs.
She won, Sunak lost, that's the end of it. She won, she's new PM, and now is when she needs to get going on her agenda.
If you're not going to implement your agenda when you win and become Prime Minister, when will you?
This announcement you are defending, was it a promise during her campaign?
Challenging Treasury orthodoxy, being reformist and going for growth absolutely was a promise made during her campaign, yes.
She needs to pull out the stops and do that. That's what she was elected to do. If she does it and its unpopular she may not win a second term, if she doesn't do it having had the chance and its the right thing to do, she doesn't deserve a second term.
We were supposed to believe at the time she was serious about all that then?
I thought she only got the win because Dorries posted that cartoon of Brutus Rishi, stabbing glorious Caesar in the back - I didn’t realise all those thousands of mrmbers were mad keen on this policy platform till you just pointed that out. 🫣
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
Mrs T was a giant compared to Truss and also more politically savvy about what the average voter needed and also had not changed positions on key issues multiple times.
She was also lucky enough to be facing a failing Labour government, not be PM 12 years into a Tory government
Yes Mrs T was much more savvy about what voters needed. At times of hardship Mrs T imposed windfall taxes on those not suffering in order to redistribute to those who were. Straight away Truss failed the Mrs T test.
Also, Maggie could read a calendar.
If this is the right thing to do, the time to do it is in the sweet afterglow of a new electoral mandate.
Even if this works*, it's not going to work by autumn 2024. So proposing it now gets the political pain without the tax receipts. Nuts, and the sort of thing that you do if you read about Maggie without direct experience or understanding.
* By works, I'd go a bit wider than annual tax take. Does a bonus obsession encourage too much risk to be taken by bankers? I don't know, but it needs consideration.
Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.
Any major changes she wants to get done, that might not be politically appealing, now is the time. The politically appealing ones, those you can save up for the General Election year.
“ Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.‘
😆
This hasn’t been one of your better days Barty.
Less than 50% of the members of her own party voted for her. She just about pipped second in vote of her parties MPs.
She won, Sunak lost, that's the end of it. She won, she's new PM, and now is when she needs to get going on her agenda.
If you're not going to implement your agenda when you win and become Prime Minister, when will you?
This announcement you are defending, was it a promise during her campaign?
Challenging Treasury orthodoxy, being reformist and going for growth absolutely was a promise made during her campaign, yes.
She needs to pull out the stops and do that. That's what she was elected to do. If she does it and its unpopular she may not win a second term, if she doesn't do it having had the chance and its the right thing to do, she doesn't deserve a second term.
We were supposed to believe at the time she was serious about all that then?
I thought she only got the win because Dorries posted that cartoon of Brutus Rishi, stabbing glorious Caesar in the back - I didn’t realise all those thousands of mrmbers were mad keen on this policy platform till you just pointed that out. 🫣
Well I supported her because of her agenda, yes. Which is the same agenda she has advocated for many, many years now. 👍
As for Dorries - I couldn't care less about her, and nobody serious does.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
There is a kind of consistency and logic in much of the policy agenda. They want us to be like the USA. Poor public infrastructure, high inequality but high growth and entrepreneurial opportunity.
Fair enough, but the UK isn’t the US with the continental scale market and labour force or its own vast energy and agricultural reserves. And the US spends billions upon billions of public money on its own industries.
The US indeed has vast energy reserves, but per capita, I wonder if the UK's are bigger, given that Britain is essentially a lump of coal.
Britain is being made poorer, not by fate but by dogma.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
There is a kind of consistency and logic in much of the policy agenda. They want us to be like the USA. Poor public infrastructure, high inequality but high growth and entrepreneurial opportunity.
Fair enough, but the UK isn’t the US with the continental scale market and labour force or its own vast energy and agricultural reserves. And the US spends billions upon billions of public money on its own industries.
The US indeed has vast energy reserves, but per capita, I wonder if the UK's are bigger, given that Britain is essentially a lump of coal.
Britain is being made poorer, not by fate but by dogma.
Coal was useful decades ago, but the UK had already extracted its valuable coal and was shutting down coal plants by the 1970s let alone the 1980s.
Wanting to go back to 19th century technologies strikes me as more dogmatic than anything else.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
What's he moaning about, please? Paywalled. But I can't imagine what sense he could be making.
A sensation most of us when we see his name in the byline.
I've never read his work, so am open-minded as to the gent. It was the idea of bowler-hatted Civil Servants defending Westminster Hall from intruders that puzzled me.
I think if you turn off Javascript the Telegraph wants to let you in.
Or I have a browser extension called "bypass paywalls", which seems to work with quite a few.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
Got past forty pounds of tomatoes two days ago, three stone today, and closing in on twenty kilos. This is the last four days’ harvest. From three plants on a shelf
I’m cooking loads of diced pancetta to make a pasta sauce with them all
Rather cool. Just one variety? (Metric measures are just better)
Isn't the London financial sector one of the largest in the world? Whatever the problems may be, it is not evidently a failure? It's also not clear that retaining the old boys' networks would have made things better? Nor that paying staff much less would have made things better? Perhaps there should be a public morality cap on high salaries, but won't we find when the genie is out of the bottle that the cap will end up somewhere around 65k?
IMO the strategy is what everyone has been shouting about "why don't you do something - is there no benefit of Brexit flexibility and freedom?" Greater flexibility for banks in London should lead more to want to be here, and raise lots more taxes from highly paid bankers - who will be on the High or Additional Rate..
Which is fair enough, but it's one hell of a self-created political elephant trap if it does not work quickly enough.
Got past forty pounds of tomatoes two days ago, three stone today, and closing in on twenty kilos. This is the last four days’ harvest. From three plants on a shelf
I’m cooking loads of diced pancetta to make a pasta sauce with them all
Rather cool. Just one variety? (Metric measures are just better)
Three different varieties; red: Cherry Fountain, yellow: Tumbling Tom Yellow, orange: Honeycomb
I think I said a few weeks ago that my favourite thing about Imperial/Metric measurements is that it gives me so many more round number targets
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
There is a kind of consistency and logic in much of the policy agenda. They want us to be like the USA. Poor public infrastructure, high inequality but high growth and entrepreneurial opportunity.
Fair enough, but the UK isn’t the US with the continental scale market and labour force or its own vast energy and agricultural reserves. And the US spends billions upon billions of public money on its own industries.
The US indeed has vast energy reserves, but per capita, I wonder if the UK's are bigger, given that Britain is essentially a lump of coal.
Britain is being made poorer, not by fate but by dogma.
Coal was useful decades ago, but the UK had already extracted its valuable coal and was shutting down coal plants by the 1970s let alone the 1980s.
Wanting to go back to 19th century technologies strikes me as more dogmatic than anything else.
I am not advocating a return to coal necessarily but the claim that we have extracted our valuable coal reserves is patent garbage. It was garbage when we shut them down (for political and ideological reasons) and it is even more garbage now given the new technologies available. There are just under 4 billion tonnes of hard coal still in place under the UK plus around another 1 billion tonnes of lignite.
There are plenty of good arguments for leaving it where it is in this changing world, but lack of resource is not one of them.
I do think this point is one of the most important in the header. Reacting against something as Truss claims to be doing is just as predictable as before, and usually involves the same old solutions, just swapped round.
Now the Truss government wants to shake up the Treasury and again promote the City. Deregulation is seen as necessary for growth. This is not so much a challenge to orthodoxy as doubling down on it, despite its many past failures
Lifting the bonus cap or at least looking into it is probably not a massively bad idea, policy wise. But it’s the messaging it sends about priorities and whose side they’re on that’s the killer.
That plus it nicely neutralises any future attempts at finger pointing at Brown for single-handedly causing the financial crisis by deregulating banks. An attack line that served successive Tory leaders well despite their own track record on the subject, but will be unusable henceforth.
Brown didn't cause the financial crisis by deregulating banks.
He caused the issues by overspending and by screwing up the regulations by removing Bank of England oversight from the Banks.
More regulations don't make the financial sector more secure if they're bad regulations, you need deregulation but smart regulations, rather than box ticking for the sake of politics.
How much does Kwarteng think the treasury can make by scrapping the cap, I wonder.
He must think its a lot, to risk the political capital.
OR calculation could be, that current government's time in power for delivering the goods (and goodies) to it's patrons is limited?
Certainly need for campaign funds for Truss's Tory Party in not so distant future is apparent; and many potential donors may well wish to see what you might call "earnest money" up front?
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
Mrs T was a giant compared to Truss and also more politically savvy about what the average voter needed and also had not changed positions on key issues multiple times.
She was also lucky enough to be facing a failing Labour government, not be PM 12 years into a Tory government
Yes Mrs T was much more savvy about what voters needed. At times of hardship Mrs T imposed windfall taxes on those not suffering in order to redistribute to those who were. Straight away Truss failed the Mrs T test.
Also, Maggie could read a calendar.
If this is the right thing to do, the time to do it is in the sweet afterglow of a new electoral mandate.
Even if this works*, it's not going to work by autumn 2024. So proposing it now gets the political pain without the tax receipts. Nuts, and the sort of thing that you do if you read about Maggie without direct experience or understanding.
* By works, I'd go a bit wider than annual tax take. Does a bonus obsession encourage too much risk to be taken by bankers? I don't know, but it needs consideration.
Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.
Any major changes she wants to get done, that might not be politically appealing, now is the time. The politically appealing ones, those you can save up for the General Election year.
“ Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.‘
😆
This hasn’t been one of your better days Barty.
Less than 50% of the members of her own party voted for her. She just about pipped second in vote of her parties MPs.
She won, Sunak lost, that's the end of it. She won, she's new PM, and now is when she needs to get going on her agenda.
If you're not going to implement your agenda when you win and become Prime Minister, when will you?
This announcement you are defending, was it a promise during her campaign?
Challenging Treasury orthodoxy, being reformist and going for growth absolutely was a promise made during her campaign, yes.
She needs to pull out the stops and do that. That's what she was elected to do. If she does it and its unpopular she may not win a second term, if she doesn't do it having had the chance and its the right thing to do, she doesn't deserve a second term.
We were supposed to believe at the time she was serious about all that then?
I thought she only got the win because Dorries posted that cartoon of Brutus Rishi, stabbing glorious Caesar in the back - I didn’t realise all those thousands of mrmbers were mad keen on this policy platform till you just pointed that out. 🫣
Well I supported her because of her agenda, yes. Which is the same agenda she has advocated for many, many years now. 👍
As for Dorries - I couldn't care less about her, and nobody serious does.
But that Dorries argument of disloyal Truss may have swung more votes to Liz than actual buy in to her platform is my point. We can’t be sure can we?
So what we do know, No mandate from the country, nor from her MPs - less than 50% of her membership backs her, and we can’t even be sure how much the 49% who did actually buy in to her radical plan for destroying treasury othordoxy, or just disliked Rishi for bringing down Boris. Yet you see her basking in the glow of triumph with power to remodel UK orthodoxy to her whim?
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
Mrs T was a giant compared to Truss and also more politically savvy about what the average voter needed and also had not changed positions on key issues multiple times.
She was also lucky enough to be facing a failing Labour government, not be PM 12 years into a Tory government
Yes Mrs T was much more savvy about what voters needed. At times of hardship Mrs T imposed windfall taxes on those not suffering in order to redistribute to those who were. Straight away Truss failed the Mrs T test.
Also, Maggie could read a calendar.
If this is the right thing to do, the time to do it is in the sweet afterglow of a new electoral mandate.
Even if this works*, it's not going to work by autumn 2024. So proposing it now gets the political pain without the tax receipts. Nuts, and the sort of thing that you do if you read about Maggie without direct experience or understanding.
* By works, I'd go a bit wider than annual tax take. Does a bonus obsession encourage too much risk to be taken by bankers? I don't know, but it needs consideration.
Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.
Any major changes she wants to get done, that might not be politically appealing, now is the time. The politically appealing ones, those you can save up for the General Election year.
“ Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.‘
😆
This hasn’t been one of your better days Barty.
Less than 50% of the members of her own party voted for her. She just about pipped second in vote of her parties MPs.
She won, Sunak lost, that's the end of it. She won, she's new PM, and now is when she needs to get going on her agenda.
If you're not going to implement your agenda when you win and become Prime Minister, when will you?
The odd thing is, Truss is not getting on with her agenda; she's spending her time swanning round the country standing near the new King and Queen.
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
Mrs T was a giant compared to Truss and also more politically savvy about what the average voter needed and also had not changed positions on key issues multiple times.
She was also lucky enough to be facing a failing Labour government, not be PM 12 years into a Tory government
Yes Mrs T was much more savvy about what voters needed. At times of hardship Mrs T imposed windfall taxes on those not suffering in order to redistribute to those who were. Straight away Truss failed the Mrs T test.
Also, Maggie could read a calendar.
If this is the right thing to do, the time to do it is in the sweet afterglow of a new electoral mandate.
Even if this works*, it's not going to work by autumn 2024. So proposing it now gets the political pain without the tax receipts. Nuts, and the sort of thing that you do if you read about Maggie without direct experience or understanding.
* By works, I'd go a bit wider than annual tax take. Does a bonus obsession encourage too much risk to be taken by bankers? I don't know, but it needs consideration.
Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.
Any major changes she wants to get done, that might not be politically appealing, now is the time. The politically appealing ones, those you can save up for the General Election year.
“ Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.‘
😆
This hasn’t been one of your better days Barty.
Less than 50% of the members of her own party voted for her. She just about pipped second in vote of her parties MPs.
She won, Sunak lost, that's the end of it. She won, she's new PM, and now is when she needs to get going on her agenda.
If you're not going to implement your agenda when you win and become Prime Minister, when will you?
The odd thing is, Truss is not getting on with her agenda; she's spending her time swanning round the country standing near the new King and Queen.
Her governing agenda, perhaps not.
Her political agenda of grubbing for every last vote she can get, well...
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
So no reasons for the high tax take we need to be aware of before slashing taxes?
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
Loads of people saying "they know they're going to lose the election so are just going for it". No politician ever thinks like that. They believe these policies will trigger growth and that will win them the next election once people have forgotten the controversies.
The government is reportedly considering plans to scrap the cap on bankers' bonuses. Britons are strongly against the idea.
All Britons Should scrap: 15% Should not scrap: 67%
Con voters Should scrap: 20% Should not scrap: 65%.
The North of England most anti scrapping the bankers' bonus cap, 71% against, 15% in favour. The South most supportive but even there 65% opposed, just 16% in favour
I imagine that approximately 67% of Britons are in favour of increasing taxes on other people other than themselves also.
Much as I want to give Truss a chance she is a dull leader who is on record as previously wanting to scrap the Queen and royal family while just announcing a policy to give City bankers more cash in a cost of living crisis and having switched from backing Remain to being a hard as nails Brexiteer.
If Starmer could design his ideal Tory opponent, at the moment Liz would be it unfortunately!
Far better a dull leader than a law breaking incompetent Clown IMO. I imagine you are too young to remember Mrs Thatcher, and while I don't want to make what at the moment seems like a ludicrous comparison, almost as silly as comparing Johnson to Churchill, but the fact was that everyone underestimated Mrs T to begin with. Truss may yet surprise us.
Mrs T was a giant compared to Truss and also more politically savvy about what the average voter needed and also had not changed positions on key issues multiple times.
She was also lucky enough to be facing a failing Labour government, not be PM 12 years into a Tory government
Yes Mrs T was much more savvy about what voters needed. At times of hardship Mrs T imposed windfall taxes on those not suffering in order to redistribute to those who were. Straight away Truss failed the Mrs T test.
Also, Maggie could read a calendar.
If this is the right thing to do, the time to do it is in the sweet afterglow of a new electoral mandate.
Even if this works*, it's not going to work by autumn 2024. So proposing it now gets the political pain without the tax receipts. Nuts, and the sort of thing that you do if you read about Maggie without direct experience or understanding.
* By works, I'd go a bit wider than annual tax take. Does a bonus obsession encourage too much risk to be taken by bankers? I don't know, but it needs consideration.
Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.
Any major changes she wants to get done, that might not be politically appealing, now is the time. The politically appealing ones, those you can save up for the General Election year.
“ Right now is the afterglow of Truss's new electoral mandate.‘
😆
This hasn’t been one of your better days Barty.
Less than 50% of the members of her own party voted for her. She just about pipped second in vote of her parties MPs.
She won, Sunak lost, that's the end of it. She won, she's new PM, and now is when she needs to get going on her agenda.
If you're not going to implement your agenda when you win and become Prime Minister, when will you?
The odd thing is, Truss is not getting on with her agenda; she's spending her time swanning round the country standing near the new King and Queen.
Is it really odd? the whole country seems determined to wallow in a giant mournfest, so what can Truss do but play along?
What would the reaction be if Truss tried to jockey the whole thing along? not showing enough 'respect'
Loads of people saying "they know they're going to lose the election so are just going for it". No politician ever thinks like that. They believe these policies will trigger growth and that will win them the next election once people have forgotten the controversies.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
What's he moaning about, please? Paywalled. But I can't imagine what sense he could be making.
There aren't enough people coming to London anyway, we should be doubling and redoubling their numbers because safety and security and crowd management are for dickless socialist jobsworths.
Allister Heath is, by his own admission, an unreconstructed Thatcherite. I'm afraid most of his writing is nebulous whingeing right-wingery. There was a time around the GFC when his musings on economics were required reading but he's never written well on politics.
Mrs Stodge's colleague has told us while the moving of the queue along the river was fine, the queue reached a first "holding area" where people had to stand in line for three hours without access to food or toilets and unable to leave the queue as it was one of those snake-like things you see at airports.
From there, he entered a second area where six toilets were available which, as you can imagine, for those who had to stand for three hours without any relief, were soon very busy.
Another two hours there before being able to go into Westminster Hall. Unfortunately, he was there when the soldier fainted which stopped everything as did a security sweep.
We've had a long time to plan for this but the planning seems more about other things. There are 16 million more people in the UK than there were in 1952 and with access to transport as well as demographic changes mean the potential available numbers for the lying in state were going to be much higher.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
What's he moaning about, please? Paywalled. But I can't imagine what sense he could be making.
It is mostly a sub-Leon rant about how we all love the Queen even if it's not cool. A couple of paragraphs justify the headline, complaining that the coffin should have travelled by train so more people could see it (or at least see the train, if they could tell one train from another at 80 miles an hour or however fast they go), and that airports should run 24 hours a day so foreign VIPs could use private rather than commercial flights. And that's it really.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
Loads of people saying "they know they're going to lose the election so are just going for it". No politician ever thinks like that. They believe these policies will trigger growth and that will win them the next election once people have forgotten the controversies.
The bankers' bonus change is just something I find very emotional. The feeling shown for public unity at this time, the feel for the mood of the country, the understanding that millions of people are about to be thrown into destitution without further help.
Got past forty pounds of tomatoes two days ago, three stone today, and closing in on twenty kilos. This is the last four days’ harvest. From three plants on a shelf
I’m cooking loads of diced pancetta to make a pasta sauce with them all
Not bad, 3 different units of mass in the same sentence.
Got past forty pounds of tomatoes two days ago, three stone today, and closing in on twenty kilos. This is the last four days’ harvest. From three plants on a shelf
I’m cooking loads of diced pancetta to make a pasta sauce with them all
Rather cool. Just one variety? (Metric measures are just better)
Three different varieties; red: Cherry Fountain, yellow: Tumbling Tom Yellow, orange: Honeycomb
I think I said a few weeks ago that my favourite thing about Imperial/Metric measurements is that it gives me so many more round number targets
I've grown three STONE of tomatoes!
I guess just sliced with olive oil is the first test. And then an Italian tomato sauce?
Loads of people saying "they know they're going to lose the election so are just going for it". No politician ever thinks like that. They believe these policies will trigger growth and that will win them the next election once people have forgotten the controversies.
Loads of people saying "they know they're going to lose the election so are just going for it". No politician ever thinks like that. They believe these policies will trigger growth and that will win them the next election once people have forgotten the controversies.
About an hour ago 100,000 were watching the TV livestream of The Queue doing the Catafalque Shuffle (and that's the BBC, Sky has its own live-stream)
That's 100,000 looking at OTHER people looking a box with a crown on it
Given that this is on 24/7 the overall viewing stats will be phenom
How many of those 100,000 are in the queue?
Not me!
As the world's foremost connoisseur of Royal Lying-in-State Livestreams I have to say the one in St Giles Scotland was marginally better, as the mourners got more time with the coffin - ten or fifteen seconds rather than 3 or 5 - allowing more intense emotions to emerge: proper tears, deeper bows, murmured prayers
The sheer weight of numbers invLondon is limiting the emoting
However, it is still compelling to watch. All those people, all those stories. Just now some rich, well dressed woman - completely composed - did an urgent almost gasping prayer. WTF
I rather like that the emoting is limited. Eight hours of queuing to note that yes, at the end of the queue, there is the box in which the body of the Queen lies. Stiff upper lip and all that. A bried nod, and move on, and reflect. But reflect internally! Look upon this world: this is how the British mourn.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
What's he moaning about, please? Paywalled. But I can't imagine what sense he could be making.
There aren't enough people coming to London anyway, we should be doubling and redoubling their numbers because safety and security and crowd management are for dickless socialist jobsworths.
Allister Heath is, by his own admission, an unreconstructed Thatcherite. I'm afraid most of his writing is nebulous whingeing right-wingery. There was a time around the GFC when his musings on economics were required reading but he's never written well on politics.
Mrs Stodge's colleague has told us while the moving of the queue along the river was fine, the queue reached a first "holding area" where people had to stand in line for three hours without access to food or toilets and unable to leave the queue as it was one of those snake-like things you see at airports.
From there, he entered a second area where six toilets were available which, as you can imagine, for those who had to stand for three hours without any relief, were soon very busy.
Another two hours there before being able to go into Westminster Hall. Unfortunately, he was there when the soldier fainted which stopped everything as did a security sweep.
We've had a long time to plan for this but the planning seems more about other things. There are 16 million more people in the UK than there were in 1952 and with access to transport as well as demographic changes mean the potential available numbers for the lying in state were going to be much higher.
Much rather have unreconstructed Thatcherites than loopy Trussaloonies.
In every way Thatcher never forgot her aspirational working class voters, Barty has now convinced me Truss is just as Pirate minded on economics as he is. 😕
About an hour ago 100,000 were watching the TV livestream of The Queue doing the Catafalque Shuffle (and that's the BBC, Sky has its own live-stream)
That's 100,000 looking at OTHER people looking a box with a crown on it
Given that this is on 24/7 the overall viewing stats will be phenom
How many of those 100,000 are in the queue?
Not me!
As the world's foremost connoisseur of Royal Lying-in-State Livestreams I have to say the one in St Giles Scotland was marginally better, as the mourners got more time with the coffin - ten or fifteen seconds rather than 3 or 5 - allowing more intense emotions to emerge: proper tears, deeper bows, murmured prayers
The sheer weight of numbers invLondon is limiting the emoting
However, it is still compelling to watch. All those people, all those stories. Just now some rich, well dressed woman - completely composed - did an urgent almost gasping prayer. WTF
I rather like that the emoting is limited. Eight hours of queuing to note that yes, at the end of the queue, there is the box in which the body of the Queen lies. Stiff upper lip and all that. A bried nod, and move on, and reflect. But reflect internally! Look upon this world: this is how the British mourn.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
So no reasons for the high tax take we need to be aware of before slashing taxes?
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
Taxes are certainly high, but in large part that is due to an ageing population with consequent demands for health, social care and pensions, as well as electoral sweeties under various governments.
We cannot have a tax structure like late Eighties Britain with our current aged population, and certainly not one with anything more than a cachectic welfare state. This is something true the world over, with all countries, even developing countries outside Africa facing the same issue.
We loved and doted on our ageing monarch, and it seems the new one, but for the elderly down the social scale it will be a grim future in low tax Britain.
About an hour ago 100,000 were watching the TV livestream of The Queue doing the Catafalque Shuffle (and that's the BBC, Sky has its own live-stream)
That's 100,000 looking at OTHER people looking a box with a crown on it
Given that this is on 24/7 the overall viewing stats will be phenom
How many of those 100,000 are in the queue?
Not me!
As the world's foremost connoisseur of Royal Lying-in-State Livestreams I have to say the one in St Giles Scotland was marginally better, as the mourners got more time with the coffin - ten or fifteen seconds rather than 3 or 5 - allowing more intense emotions to emerge: proper tears, deeper bows, murmured prayers
The sheer weight of numbers invLondon is limiting the emoting
However, it is still compelling to watch. All those people, all those stories. Just now some rich, well dressed woman - completely composed - did an urgent almost gasping prayer. WTF
I rather like that the emoting is limited. Eight hours of queuing to note that yes, at the end of the queue, there is the box in which the body of the Queen lies. Stiff upper lip and all that. A bried nod, and move on, and reflect. But reflect internally! Look upon this world: this is how the British mourn.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
Sorry but if a paywalled article is going to be linked, can the key theme/phrase be extracted ?
This website may be useful for PBers. It’s called 12ft ladder. Drop in a paywalled link and very often it’ll get you to an unpaywalled version. Something to do with Google caches. Voodoo to me. Still, it’s a very useful site: https://12ft.io/
Loads of people saying "they know they're going to lose the election so are just going for it". No politician ever thinks like that. They believe these policies will trigger growth and that will win them the next election once people have forgotten the controversies.
Did voters decide in 97 how they would vote, or in the weeks following Black Wednesday, or somewhere in between.
It probably varies, but to what extent is the writing on the wall long before the actual vote?
97 was partly about tory voters not turning up, and it will be the same this time.
This doesn't feel remotely like the 92-97 period to me.
That period came at the tail end of a transformative government that defined an era but had run out of ideas. Blair's promise was essentially more of the same, but in a younger, slicker, less tainted package.
This government comes after a period of upheaval and is seeking to be the one to define a new era. A better parallel would be 1983 than 1997.
About an hour ago 100,000 were watching the TV livestream of The Queue doing the Catafalque Shuffle (and that's the BBC, Sky has its own live-stream)
That's 100,000 looking at OTHER people looking a box with a crown on it
Given that this is on 24/7 the overall viewing stats will be phenom
How many of those 100,000 are in the queue?
Not me!
As the world's foremost connoisseur of Royal Lying-in-State Livestreams I have to say the one in St Giles Scotland was marginally better, as the mourners got more time with the coffin - ten or fifteen seconds rather than 3 or 5 - allowing more intense emotions to emerge: proper tears, deeper bows, murmured prayers
The sheer weight of numbers invLondon is limiting the emoting
However, it is still compelling to watch. All those people, all those stories. Just now some rich, well dressed woman - completely composed - did an urgent almost gasping prayer. WTF
I rather like that the emoting is limited. Eight hours of queuing to note that yes, at the end of the queue, there is the box in which the body of the Queen lies. Stiff upper lip and all that. A bried nod, and move on, and reflect. But reflect internally! Look upon this world: this is how the British mourn.
Far from it. Under BR if a train broke down there would be a spare loco and crew available, it would drop onto the front and you'd be on your way within the hour.
Mammoth delays after a failure are a feature of the disjointed, privatised railway.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
So no reasons for the high tax take we need to be aware of before slashing taxes?
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
Taxes are certainly high, but in large part that is due to an ageing population with consequent demands for health, social care and pensions, as well as electoral sweeties under various governments.
We cannot have a tax structure like late Eighties Britain with our current aged population, and certainly not one with anything more than a cachectic welfare state. This is something true the world over, with all countries, even developing countries outside Africa facing the same issue.
We loved and doted on our ageing monarch, and it seems the new one, but for the elderly down the social scale it will be a grim future in low tax Britain.
If only we could have an influx of healthy, younger folk willing to work hard and pay taxes....
About an hour ago 100,000 were watching the TV livestream of The Queue doing the Catafalque Shuffle (and that's the BBC, Sky has its own live-stream)
That's 100,000 looking at OTHER people looking a box with a crown on it
Given that this is on 24/7 the overall viewing stats will be phenom
How many of those 100,000 are in the queue?
Not me!
As the world's foremost connoisseur of Royal Lying-in-State Livestreams I have to say the one in St Giles Scotland was marginally better, as the mourners got more time with the coffin - ten or fifteen seconds rather than 3 or 5 - allowing more intense emotions to emerge: proper tears, deeper bows, murmured prayers
The sheer weight of numbers invLondon is limiting the emoting
However, it is still compelling to watch. All those people, all those stories. Just now some rich, well dressed woman - completely composed - did an urgent almost gasping prayer. WTF
I rather like that the emoting is limited. Eight hours of queuing to note that yes, at the end of the queue, there is the box in which the body of the Queen lies. Stiff upper lip and all that. A bried nod, and move on, and reflect. But reflect internally! Look upon this world: this is how the British mourn.
Far from it. Under BR if a train broke down there would be a spare loco and crew available, it would drop onto the front and you'd be on your way within the hour.
Mammoth delays after a failure are a feature of the disjointed, privatised railway.
My experience of BR was very, very different. My brother experienced even worse,
About an hour ago 100,000 were watching the TV livestream of The Queue doing the Catafalque Shuffle (and that's the BBC, Sky has its own live-stream)
That's 100,000 looking at OTHER people looking a box with a crown on it
Given that this is on 24/7 the overall viewing stats will be phenom
How many of those 100,000 are in the queue?
Not me!
As the world's foremost connoisseur of Royal Lying-in-State Livestreams I have to say the one in St Giles Scotland was marginally better, as the mourners got more time with the coffin - ten or fifteen seconds rather than 3 or 5 - allowing more intense emotions to emerge: proper tears, deeper bows, murmured prayers
The sheer weight of numbers invLondon is limiting the emoting
However, it is still compelling to watch. All those people, all those stories. Just now some rich, well dressed woman - completely composed - did an urgent almost gasping prayer. WTF
I rather like that the emoting is limited. Eight hours of queuing to note that yes, at the end of the queue, there is the box in which the body of the Queen lies. Stiff upper lip and all that. A bried nod, and move on, and reflect. But reflect internally! Look upon this world: this is how the British mourn.
Far from it. Under BR if a train broke down there would be a spare loco and crew available, it would drop onto the front and you'd be on your way within the hour.
Mammoth delays after a failure are a feature of the disjointed, privatised railway.
Before Beeching there would have been a diversionary route available as well.
About an hour ago 100,000 were watching the TV livestream of The Queue doing the Catafalque Shuffle (and that's the BBC, Sky has its own live-stream)
That's 100,000 looking at OTHER people looking a box with a crown on it
Given that this is on 24/7 the overall viewing stats will be phenom
How many of those 100,000 are in the queue?
Not me!
As the world's foremost connoisseur of Royal Lying-in-State Livestreams I have to say the one in St Giles Scotland was marginally better, as the mourners got more time with the coffin - ten or fifteen seconds rather than 3 or 5 - allowing more intense emotions to emerge: proper tears, deeper bows, murmured prayers
The sheer weight of numbers invLondon is limiting the emoting
However, it is still compelling to watch. All those people, all those stories. Just now some rich, well dressed woman - completely composed - did an urgent almost gasping prayer. WTF
I rather like that the emoting is limited. Eight hours of queuing to note that yes, at the end of the queue, there is the box in which the body of the Queen lies. Stiff upper lip and all that. A bried nod, and move on, and reflect. But reflect internally! Look upon this world: this is how the British mourn.
Far from it. Under BR if a train broke down there would be a spare loco and crew available, it would drop onto the front and you'd be on your way within the hour.
Mammoth delays after a failure are a feature of the disjointed, privatised railway.
And indeed there'd often bne spare coaches in the nearby sidings as well. That's a feature of the trainside landscape that has changed tremendously for a traveller who started in the 1960s. No arguments either about who paid for which bit of rolling stock or loco, or their use of track.
One slightly odd feature of the bankers bonus thing is that generally the massive structure of law etc which allows the very rich to stay rich is hidden behind a great deal of incomprehensible complexity.
It would not have been all that difficult to hide this change behind a mass of dull regulatory reform (post Brexit unwindings and simplifications) so boring and complex that journalists would not take the trouble.
As it is they have rather made a virtue of it. Something is going on in the political weather. A bit 1979 ish (except for borrowing all that cash we can't afford).
Started at Bermondsey at 6am. I should get through about 3am
Hope the weather stays good for your wait. What's "the mood" among the crowd there, in that annoying TV anchors' phrase ?
Quite British. Some chatty and making friends. Others more reserved and making jokes about the queue. Most people on their phones a lot. A very small few debating about whether to sneak their friends/partners in, which is high risk if discovered.
Everyone occasionally comments on the length and speed. All speculating when we'll get through.
Mind you, the most amusing thing about bankers' bonuses and their mega-pay is that the Left get so het up about the issue. I thought the whole point of socialism was to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, which is exactly what happens at Goldman Sachs.
I think the original idea was to secure those rights for all workers, not just bankers. Could be wrong though.
Anyway, you've got to start somewhere, haven't you?
Bankers can have unlimited bonuses. Bankers can have unlimited wages.
What I would legislate is that, for a company employing in the UK, the CEO's or any top earners bonus, can only be a certain.multiple of the lowliest employees bonus (say 40% average vs 20% average). The pension in multiplier terms is on a par with the lowliest employees terms. Etc.
Pay your top staff an uncapped bonus, expect to pay much more to the lowliest too.
Oh, and note that your cleaning contractor has a CEO as well.
Let’s say there is someone who dramatically underperforms. I would donut them.
But if you do that then the CEO gets a donut as well regardless of whether he does a good, bad or indifferent job
The Russian government is administering an across-the-board cut of 10% in budgetary expenses. This is in reaction to a larger-than-expected decline of fiscal revenues over the summer (a deficit of close to 1.5 trillion rubles). This is likely only the first step. https://twitter.com/NoYardstick/status/1570426432471592960
97 was partly about tory voters not turning up, and it will be the same this time.
This old chestnut.
Apparently there was a conscious mass abstention on the part of millions of Conservative voters. It wasn't any of them voted Labour, oh no, they just decided not to vote in 1997 or in 2001 or 2005 either.
Seriously - I recall polling been done after BOTH the 2001 and 2005 elections asking those who hadn't voted how they would have voted and Labour would have had bigger majorities had more voters turned out.
I suspect the same would have been true in 1997 - the abstention was Labour voters thinking they didn't need to vote because it was a foregone conclusion (which it was). The amusing thing was watching Conservatives simply failing to come to terms with the fact they hadn't just lost, they'd been comprehensively defeated.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
So no reasons for the high tax take we need to be aware of before slashing taxes?
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
Taxes are certainly high, but in large part that is due to an ageing population with consequent demands for health, social care and pensions, as well as electoral sweeties under various governments.
We cannot have a tax structure like late Eighties Britain with our current aged population, and certainly not one with anything more than a cachectic welfare state. This is something true the world over, with all countries, even developing countries outside Africa facing the same issue.
We loved and doted on our ageing monarch, and it seems the new one, but for the elderly down the social scale it will be a grim future in low tax Britain.
If only we could have an influx of healthy, younger folk willing to work hard and pay taxes....
As far as I can see the rate of immigration is about the same as it was when we were in the EU, its just the immigrants come from elsewhere.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
I don’t have a problem with unlimited bankers’ bonuses as long as they sign up for unlimited personal liability.
Do you have a problem with unlimited bankers' base pay, or should it be brought down to something nice and populist invented by the next John McDonnell like £55k?
Celtic in trouble for anti queen banners including SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS MICHAEL FAGAN
LOL
'Meanwhile, Uefa said it would not take action Rangers for defying its rules by playing God Save the King before their 3-0 defeat to Napoli at Ibrox later on Wednesday evening.'
The Russian government is administering an across-the-board cut of 10% in budgetary expenses. This is in reaction to a larger-than-expected decline of fiscal revenues over the summer (a deficit of close to 1.5 trillion rubles). This is likely only the first step. https://twitter.com/NoYardstick/status/1570426432471592960
About an hour ago 100,000 were watching the TV livestream of The Queue doing the Catafalque Shuffle (and that's the BBC, Sky has its own live-stream)
That's 100,000 looking at OTHER people looking a box with a crown on it
Given that this is on 24/7 the overall viewing stats will be phenom
How many of those 100,000 are in the queue?
Not me!
As the world's foremost connoisseur of Royal Lying-in-State Livestreams I have to say the one in St Giles Scotland was marginally better, as the mourners got more time with the coffin - ten or fifteen seconds rather than 3 or 5 - allowing more intense emotions to emerge: proper tears, deeper bows, murmured prayers
The sheer weight of numbers invLondon is limiting the emoting
However, it is still compelling to watch. All those people, all those stories. Just now some rich, well dressed woman - completely composed - did an urgent almost gasping prayer. WTF
I rather like that the emoting is limited. Eight hours of queuing to note that yes, at the end of the queue, there is the box in which the body of the Queen lies. Stiff upper lip and all that. A bried nod, and move on, and reflect. But reflect internally! Look upon this world: this is how the British mourn.
Far from it. Under BR if a train broke down there would be a spare loco and crew available, it would drop onto the front and you'd be on your way within the hour.
Mammoth delays after a failure are a feature of the disjointed, privatised railway.
My experience of BR was very, very different. My brother experienced even worse,
We have a family joke is someone is seriously delayed; “high seas at Dawlish?” It arises from an occasion when I decided to get the train from Bristol to Glasgow to save the company some money. The Bristol to Glasgow train, due around 12noon, was delayed coming from Plymouth due to high seas at Dawlish. It was terminated at Birmingham and we were advised to take a train to Nuneaton and then change at Crewe. After missing the connection at Crewe and waiting two hours for a Glasgow train, which was further delayed at Lockerbie due to the preceding train having broken down at Beattock, I eventually got home at 6am the following morning, courtesy of a BR funded taxi. At least trains has comfortable seats in those days.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
That's a new one on me. At the risk of being prim, is it not, er... illegal?
Don't think so, and it's not the end user they are going to go after. My view is, anyone who causes a result to pop up in my search despite it being paywalled, is a spammy fucker, so there.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
So no reasons for the high tax take we need to be aware of before slashing taxes?
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
Taxes are certainly high, but in large part that is due to an ageing population with consequent demands for health, social care and pensions, as well as electoral sweeties under various governments.
We cannot have a tax structure like late Eighties Britain with our current aged population, and certainly not one with anything more than a cachectic welfare state. This is something true the world over, with all countries, even developing countries outside Africa facing the same issue.
We loved and doted on our ageing monarch, and it seems the new one, but for the elderly down the social scale it will be a grim future in low tax Britain.
If only we could have an influx of healthy, younger folk willing to work hard and pay taxes....
Immigration has continued pretty much at the same rate, and we have labour shortages too.
The ageing of the population pyramid is pretty much certain, and even with the immigration rate of last decades the working population is merely predicted to be stable between 2015 and 2030, with the increase of population being a growth in the over 65s of 2.5 million people.
The only way to square the circle is pay more (in taxes or quasi-taxes like compulsory insurance), get less, or work longer. Or a combination of all 3, in various proportions. This is the reality that faces all politicians, though they turn away fantasising of economic growth at rates that mature post industrial economies with our population pyramid never achieve. The future looks more like Japan than the post war golden period.
"Why can’t the Civil Service, just for once, pull out all the stops? Britain must not let petty officialdom stop millions from paying their respects to the late Queen
I don’t have a problem with unlimited bankers’ bonuses as long as they sign up for unlimited personal liability.
Do you have a problem with unlimited bankers' base pay, or should it be brought down to something nice and populist invented by the next John McDonnell like £55k?
I would suggest that nurses’ pay is capped at a quarter of bankers’s pay on the basis that bankers are four times more valuable than nurses.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
So no reasons for the high tax take we need to be aware of before slashing taxes?
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
Taxes are certainly high, but in large part that is due to an ageing population with consequent demands for health, social care and pensions, as well as electoral sweeties under various governments.
We cannot have a tax structure like late Eighties Britain with our current aged population, and certainly not one with anything more than a cachectic welfare state. This is something true the world over, with all countries, even developing countries outside Africa facing the same issue.
We loved and doted on our ageing monarch, and it seems the new one, but for the elderly down the social scale it will be a grim future in low tax Britain.
If only we could have an influx of healthy, younger folk willing to work hard and pay taxes....
As far as I can see the rate of immigration is about the same as it was when we were in the EU, its just the immigrants come from elsewhere.
Yes, but are they dependants or workers? The danger was always that the usually single East Europeans would be replaced with a family from elsewhere with one worker and several dependants.
I don’t have a problem with unlimited bankers’ bonuses as long as they sign up for unlimited personal liability.
Do you have a problem with unlimited bankers' base pay, or should it be brought down to something nice and populist invented by the next John McDonnell like £55k?
I would suggest that nurses’ pay is capped at a quarter of bankers’s pay on the basis that bankers are four times more valuable than nurses.
Most people would say nurses are more valuable than bankers, so this will end up with bankers' pay capped pretty low. A victory for common-sense morality, while everyone wonders why the economy of the South East is tumbling.
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
So no reasons for the high tax take we need to be aware of before slashing taxes?
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
Taxes are certainly high, but in large part that is due to an ageing population with consequent demands for health, social care and pensions, as well as electoral sweeties under various governments.
We cannot have a tax structure like late Eighties Britain with our current aged population, and certainly not one with anything more than a cachectic welfare state. This is something true the world over, with all countries, even developing countries outside Africa facing the same issue.
We loved and doted on our ageing monarch, and it seems the new one, but for the elderly down the social scale it will be a grim future in low tax Britain.
If only we could have an influx of healthy, younger folk willing to work hard and pay taxes....
Immigration has continued pretty much at the same rate, and we have labour shortages too.
The ageing of the population pyramid is pretty much certain, and even with the immigration rate of last decades the working population is merely predicted to be stable between 2015 and 2030, with the increase of population being a growth in the over 65s of 2.5 million people.
The only way to square the circle is pay more (in taxes or quasi-taxes like compulsory insurance), get less, or work longer. Or a combination of all 3, in various proportions. This is the reality that faces all politicians, though they turn away fantasising of economic growth at rates that mature post industrial economies with our population pyramid never achieve. The future looks more like Japan than the post war golden period.
We missed a golden opportunity to correct the population pyramid during Covid. Remind me again which party wrinklies vote for?
NYT - Entering a general election, Don Bolduc said he now believed Biden won in 2020: ‘I’ve done a lot of research.’
Like a driver making a screeching U-turn, Don Bolduc, the Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire, pivoted on Thursday from his primary race to the general election, saying he had “come to the conclusion” that the 2020 presidential election “was not stolen,” after he had spent more than a year claiming it was.
“I’ve done a lot of research on this, and I’ve spent the past couple weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from every party, and I have come to the conclusion — and I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen,” Mr. Bolduc said in an interview on Fox News.
He continued to falsely claim there had been fraud in the election but acknowledged that the outcome was not in question.
“Elections have consequences, and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country,” he said.
Mr. Bolduc won his primary on Tuesday over a more moderate candidate, Chuck Morse, the president of the New Hampshire Senate. Mr. Bolduc ran on an uncompromising right-wing platform, complete with declarations that former President Donald J. Trump had won the 2020 election.
But now he faces a tough general election campaign against Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. She is vulnerable in November — but, Republicans worry, less vulnerable against Mr. Bolduc than she would have been against Mr. Morse.
Ms. Hassan’s campaign responded quickly to Mr. Bolduc’s reversal, sharing a series of videos and quotes of the many times Mr. Bolduc promoted the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
“Don Bolduc is desperately trying to run from years of spreading the Big Lie, but he can’t hide from the video receipts,” her campaign said in a statement.
The Russian government is administering an across-the-board cut of 10% in budgetary expenses. This is in reaction to a larger-than-expected decline of fiscal revenues over the summer (a deficit of close to 1.5 trillion rubles). This is likely only the first step. https://twitter.com/NoYardstick/status/1570426432471592960
I think theres a risk of dramatically overstating the electoral effect of this policy. 65% against it but so what? It costs nothing. It no more leads to polling decline than the 80 to 90% in favour of the energy measures have produced a landslide lead. Plus it will be announced amidst a tsunami of support. 'This package is to provide support and boost growth' 'Well lets see how that goes'
Opportunity cost. Now is the time she could be announcing widely popular policies that would close the polling gap.
IF Truss is going to give people their money back, then go big. Don't trim taxes, slash them, so that ordinary folk see it in their wages.
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
That’s the problem with CT cuts (which nobody really feels) and reversing tax rises that hasn’t yet happened. That plus crumbling public services just isn’t going to cut it.
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
She can borrow us to growth?
Lets imagine Sunak won.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
Isn’t the taxes high because governments have incrementally been bandaging up the public sector with it, to stop it completely falling apart. Peel away those bandages with tax cuts, and NHS and social care and education for example could just fall apart in the governments hands?
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
So no reasons for the high tax take we need to be aware of before slashing taxes?
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
Taxes are certainly high, but in large part that is due to an ageing population with consequent demands for health, social care and pensions, as well as electoral sweeties under various governments.
We cannot have a tax structure like late Eighties Britain with our current aged population, and certainly not one with anything more than a cachectic welfare state. This is something true the world over, with all countries, even developing countries outside Africa facing the same issue.
We loved and doted on our ageing monarch, and it seems the new one, but for the elderly down the social scale it will be a grim future in low tax Britain.
If only we could have an influx of healthy, younger folk willing to work hard and pay taxes....
Immigration has continued pretty much at the same rate, and we have labour shortages too.
The ageing of the population pyramid is pretty much certain, and even with the immigration rate of last decades the working population is merely predicted to be stable between 2015 and 2030, with the increase of population being a growth in the over 65s of 2.5 million people.
The only way to square the circle is pay more (in taxes or quasi-taxes like compulsory insurance), get less, or work longer. Or a combination of all 3, in various proportions. This is the reality that faces all politicians, though they turn away fantasising of economic growth at rates that mature post industrial economies with our population pyramid never achieve. The future looks more like Japan than the post war golden period.
Well, many of us are getting less (ZHC's are a lot more common) and also most of us now have to work longer (retirement age is up). So all that leaves is to put taxes up.... I am sure the govt will do the right thing.....
Comments
People dont mind others doing well if they are feeling OK about their own finances.
She may or may not win the next election, but she is already there now. She has a limited window to get done what she believes in and now is the time to start.
How many former Prime Ministers look back on their time in office afterwards and think "I wish I had been less bold?"
As others have commented Thatcher had North Sea revenues and privatisation windfalls to play with. Truss has a bare cupboard.
I’m cooking loads of diced pancetta to make a pasta sauce with them all
She needs to pull out the stops and do that. That's what she was elected to do. If she does it and its unpopular she may not win a second term, if she doesn't do it having had the chance and its the right thing to do, she doesn't deserve a second term.
Fair enough, but the UK isn’t the US with the continental scale market and labour force or its own vast energy and agricultural reserves. And the US spends billions upon billions of public money on its own industries.
There's already evidence that his super high taxes are falling well short of what he envisioned (see last months budget numbers).
Add to those taxes the interest rate increases which will have to come to choke off inflation and shore up the pound and you've got a dead economy walking. You've got depression and bankruptcy and choice of huge cuts in public spending or a corbynite kleptocracy.
I thought she only got the win because Dorries posted that cartoon of Brutus Rishi, stabbing glorious Caesar in the back - I didn’t realise all those thousands of mrmbers were mad keen on this policy platform till you just pointed that out. 🫣
As for Dorries - I couldn't care less about her, and nobody serious does.
Britain is being made poorer, not by fate but by dogma.
Wanting to go back to 19th century technologies strikes me as more dogmatic than anything else.
Or I have a browser extension called "bypass paywalls", which seems to work with quite a few.
Surely the first step in tacking high taxes is tackle the reasons for high taxes - unless your argument is there is no reason for this high tax take at all?
Which is fair enough, but it's one hell of a self-created political elephant trap if it does not work quickly enough.
I think I said a few weeks ago that my favourite thing about Imperial/Metric measurements is that it gives me so many more round number targets
I've grown three STONE of tomatoes!
There are plenty of good arguments for leaving it where it is in this changing world, but lack of resource is not one of them.
Now the Truss government wants to shake up the Treasury and again promote the City. Deregulation is seen as necessary for growth. This is not so much a challenge to orthodoxy as doubling down on it, despite its many past failures
Certainly need for campaign funds for Truss's Tory Party in not so distant future is apparent; and many potential donors may well wish to see what you might call "earnest money" up front?
So what we do know, No mandate from the country, nor from her MPs - less than 50% of her membership backs her, and we can’t even be sure how much the 49% who did actually buy in to her radical plan for destroying treasury othordoxy, or just disliked Rishi for bringing down Boris. Yet you see her basking in the glow of triumph with power to remodel UK orthodoxy to her whim?
Her political agenda of grubbing for every last vote she can get, well...
no reasoning behind getting to highest tax take since the bankrupt time after Second World War? just the fault of Rishi, Rishi and a socialist minded Treasury raised government money for things the wrong way?
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1570165790946754561
But of course, they are often wrong.
What would the reaction be if Truss tried to jockey the whole thing along? not showing enough 'respect'
Mrs Stodge's colleague has told us while the moving of the queue along the river was fine, the queue reached a first "holding area" where people had to stand in line for three hours without access to food or toilets and unable to leave the queue as it was one of those snake-like things you see at airports.
From there, he entered a second area where six toilets were available which, as you can imagine, for those who had to stand for three hours without any relief, were soon very busy.
Another two hours there before being able to go into Westminster Hall. Unfortunately, he was there when the soldier fainted which stopped everything as did a security sweep.
We've had a long time to plan for this but the planning seems more about other things. There are 16 million more people in the UK than there were in 1952 and with access to transport as well as demographic changes mean the potential available numbers for the lying in state were going to be much higher.
Did voters decide in 97 how they would vote, or in the weeks following Black Wednesday, or somewhere in between.
It probably varies, but to what extent is the writing on the wall long before the actual vote?
It's very beautiful and very moving.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/15/eddie-butler-former-wales-rugby-union-captain-and-journalist-dies-aged-65
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62917548
You could have waited for 20kg!
97 was partly about tory voters not turning up, and it will be the same this time.
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-09-14/official-queen-lying-in-state-queue-tracker-shows-length-and-end-of-line-live?a
In every way Thatcher never forgot her aspirational working class voters, Barty has now convinced me Truss is just as Pirate minded on economics as he is. 😕
We cannot have a tax structure like late Eighties Britain with our current aged population, and certainly not one with anything more than a cachectic welfare state. This is something true the world over, with all countries, even developing countries outside Africa facing the same issue.
We loved and doted on our ageing monarch, and it seems the new one, but for the elderly down the social scale it will be a grim future in low tax Britain.
https://12ft.io/
That period came at the tail end of a transformative government that defined an era but had run out of ideas. Blair's promise was essentially more of the same, but in a younger, slicker, less tainted package.
This government comes after a period of upheaval and is seeking to be the one to define a new era. A better parallel would be 1983 than 1997.
Mammoth delays after a failure are a feature of the disjointed, privatised railway.
It would not have been all that difficult to hide this change behind a mass of dull regulatory reform (post Brexit unwindings and simplifications) so boring and complex that journalists would not take the trouble.
As it is they have rather made a virtue of it. Something is going on in the political weather. A bit 1979 ish (except for borrowing all that cash we can't afford).
Everyone occasionally comments on the length and speed. All speculating when we'll get through.
Anyway, you've got to start somewhere, haven't you?
Celtic in trouble for anti queen banners including SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS MICHAEL FAGAN
LOL
But if you do that then the CEO gets a donut as well regardless of whether he does a good, bad or indifferent job
Bonuses should be performance related
https://twitter.com/NoYardstick/status/1570426432471592960
Apparently there was a conscious mass abstention on the part of millions of Conservative voters. It wasn't any of them voted Labour, oh no, they just decided not to vote in 1997 or in 2001 or 2005 either.
Seriously - I recall polling been done after BOTH the 2001 and 2005 elections asking those who hadn't voted how they would have voted and Labour would have had bigger majorities had more voters turned out.
I suspect the same would have been true in 1997 - the abstention was Labour voters thinking they didn't need to vote because it was a foregone conclusion (which it was). The amusing thing was watching Conservatives simply failing to come to terms with the fact they hadn't just lost, they'd been comprehensively defeated.
25 years on and it still brings a smile.
The ageing of the population pyramid is pretty much certain, and even with the immigration rate of last decades the working population is merely predicted to be stable between 2015 and 2030, with the increase of population being a growth in the over 65s of 2.5 million people.
The only way to square the circle is pay more (in taxes or quasi-taxes like compulsory insurance), get less, or work longer. Or a combination of all 3, in various proportions. This is the reality that faces all politicians, though they turn away fantasising of economic growth at rates that mature post industrial economies with our population pyramid never achieve. The future looks more like Japan than the post war golden period.
Still sort of feels like I'm on my way to meet her.
So it is: Private Unlimited Company
Good for them.
Like a driver making a screeching U-turn, Don Bolduc, the Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire, pivoted on Thursday from his primary race to the general election, saying he had “come to the conclusion” that the 2020 presidential election “was not stolen,” after he had spent more than a year claiming it was.
“I’ve done a lot of research on this, and I’ve spent the past couple weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from every party, and I have come to the conclusion — and I want to be definitive on this — the election was not stolen,” Mr. Bolduc said in an interview on Fox News.
He continued to falsely claim there had been fraud in the election but acknowledged that the outcome was not in question.
“Elections have consequences, and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country,” he said.
Mr. Bolduc won his primary on Tuesday over a more moderate candidate, Chuck Morse, the president of the New Hampshire Senate. Mr. Bolduc ran on an uncompromising right-wing platform, complete with declarations that former President Donald J. Trump had won the 2020 election.
But now he faces a tough general election campaign against Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat. She is vulnerable in November — but, Republicans worry, less vulnerable against Mr. Bolduc than she would have been against Mr. Morse.
Ms. Hassan’s campaign responded quickly to Mr. Bolduc’s reversal, sharing a series of videos and quotes of the many times Mr. Bolduc promoted the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
“Don Bolduc is desperately trying to run from years of spreading the Big Lie, but he can’t hide from the video receipts,” her campaign said in a statement.