It is taxable, 50k in total. @eek The dividend tax has gone up to 8.75% but that is small change. It only becomes significant if you go over 50k in total. But my point is that retired people can have huge amounts of disposable income whilst earning under 50k, because of the dysfunctional structure of the tax system.
That's because shareholders have already paid corporation tax on their dividends.
They've also already paid Employers National Insurance on their employees incomes, and employees also have already paid Employees National Insurance too. They're still expected to pay the full rate of Income Tax.
Actually that's a good point, As you rightly say, viewed in the conventional way, shareholders have also paid tax on their employees' incomes. (Although personally I think employers' NI should really be regarded as income tax on the employee).
However, I was explaining the rationale for dividend tax being what it is.
Ukrainian Army's offensife confirmed by Russian source Rybar. According to the Rybar, the Ukrainian Army opened two fronts at Dudchany and Davydiv Brid in the northeast of Kherson. https://twitter.com/BarracudaVol1/status/1582674069396168706
This PMQs is going to be so so awkward. I think I’ll be watching it between my fingers.
I’ve rescheduled a meeting so I can watch PMQs.
I've rescheduled a meeting so I can't. 😉
We did all* warn you Truss would be shit
*Except Leondarmus.
I don't care, still glad she won the leadership election. She abolished the Health and Social Care Levy. 👍
I said all along I thought that Truss would be unpopular and would lose the election, but I didn't care. You know how much I opposed the Health and Social Care Levy, you published my article on that.
If you offer me a Faustian pact where I get to choose: Rishi wins and the Tories win the next election, with the Health and Social Care Levy introduced, or Truss wins and the Tories lose the next election, with the Health and Social Care Levy scrapped, then I would not sell my soul to win the next election.
I have my principles, if you don't like them, don't ask for my vote.
Except she’s destroyed a tax cutting agenda for at least a decade if not longer.
You’ve thrown out the baby with the bath water.
Starmer may also not be Corbyn but he is not Blair either. His government assuming he is elected will be the most leftwing in the UK since the Wilson and Callaghan government of the 1970s and taxes will be much higher for higher earners and the wealthy especially
The three line whip/making the fracking vote a confidence issue is insane right? Not only is it completely against the 2019 Manifesto fracking policy, tens to hundreds of Tory MPs will have to backtrack or rebel. Given how many of them know they're buggered with Truss if I were them I'd still vote against.
This PMQs is going to be so so awkward. I think I’ll be watching it between my fingers.
I’ve rescheduled a meeting so I can watch PMQs.
I've rescheduled a meeting so I can't. 😉
We did all* warn you Truss would be shit
*Except Leondarmus.
I don't care, still glad she won the leadership election. She abolished the Health and Social Care Levy. 👍
I said all along I thought that Truss would be unpopular and would lose the election, but I didn't care. You know how much I opposed the Health and Social Care Levy, you published my article on that.
If you offer me a Faustian pact where I get to choose: Rishi wins and the Tories win the next election, with the Health and Social Care Levy introduced, or Truss wins and the Tories lose the next election, with the Health and Social Care Levy scrapped, then I would not sell my soul to win the next election.
I have my principles, if you don't like them, don't ask for my vote.
Except she’s destroyed a tax cutting agenda for at least a decade if not longer.
You’ve thrown out the baby with the bath water.
Truss has managed to switch the conversation from when the tax cuts will arrive to where can tax be increased without it being too painful.
And reintroduced austerity because it's the extra borrowing costs she's created mean that governmental cutbacks are now unavoidable.
NEW: Message to Tory MPs from deputy chief whip Craig Whittaker declares that this afternoon's vote on fracking (Labour want to ban it for good) is "a confidence motion in the Government".
Lots of Tory MPs are opposed to fracking in their areas.
'Fracking caused an earthquake every day at the UK’s only active site at Preston New Road in Lancashire, analysis has found.
Between 2018 and 2019, the site near Blackpool was responsible for 192 earthquakes over the course of 182 days , according to analysis of House of Commons Library data by the Liberal Democrats.[...]
There are understood to be at least 40 Tories who are vocally against fracking, and the Guardian understands a letter, signed by dozens saying they could not support fracking, has been delivered to the business and energy secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg.'
There's plenty of arguments against fracking but are these 'earthquakes' really doing any harm? They are tiny. I've never noticed anything from the site at Misson (Notts).
It would be nice to have a sane discussion about issues of this kind.
Market Rasen in 2008 was a proper earthquake (and entirely natural).
All's fair in politics ... but do bear in mind that that is from a (IIRC) single well, not a whole array of the kind that would be needed for actual production.
What is it with these PMs who go by their middle names? Mary Truss, Alexander Johnson and James Brown. At least you can see why James "Sex Machine" Brown might have chosen to go by Gordon. Is it that common among normal people?
I can see why it might happen in an extended family, or workplace/school, if you have several people with the same first name, that they might come to be known by their second name. Though I can't think of an example in my own family.
The West Cork tradition is often to combine first and second names where there is duplication. So there might be one person known as, say, Mary, and another as Mary-Liz, etc, and there's long been so many Marys in Ireland that some of these have become separate first names in their own right - Mary-Ann, Mary-Lou, etc, but it happens with male names too.
The other thing that happens is variations on the name: John, Johnny, Jo, John-Jo, etc.
I have an extremely unusual first name, which is apparently sometimes unpronounceable.
My paternal grandmother's idea apparently; my maternal grandmother said something to the effect of give him something that people will will know and use.
I've never used my second name, always my first!
Good morning, Plantagenet.
Sorry, wrong. More unusual!
Heliogabalus? Wenceslaus? Is it a regal-type name?
The three line whip/making the fracking vote a confidence issue is insane right? Not only is it completely against the 2019 Manifesto fracking policy, tens to hundreds of Tory MPs will have to backtrack or rebel. Given how many of them know they're buggered with Truss if I were them I'd still vote against.
Making
The government amendment is, as far as I can tell, entirely consistent with the 2019 manifesto.
Why is everyone referring to the left and right banks of the Dneiper (And every other river in Ukraine) ???
Are we facing north or toward the sea ?
It's incredibly annoying habit that rybar, tryxa and uncle Tom cobley's sitrep reports etc are into.
It’s always in the direction the river flows, so the left bank is the east. There’s a good reason to use left/right in Ukraine because they correspond with historical names too.
It also deals with the issue that rivers bend, sharply. What is East/West in one place, is North/South in another, nearby, location. Look at the river as it flows through Kherson.
Once again, Labour has forced the fracking vote to be a 3 line whip by the Gov't by virtue that they'll take the order paper if the motion succeeds. It's Labour playing (& Playing well it must be said) politics.
What is it with these PMs who go by their middle names? Mary Truss, Alexander Johnson and James Brown. At least you can see why James "Sex Machine" Brown might have chosen to go by Gordon. Is it that common among normal people?
I can see why it might happen in an extended family, or workplace/school, if you have several people with the same first name, that they might come to be known by their second name. Though I can't think of an example in my own family.
The West Cork tradition is often to combine first and second names where there is duplication. So there might be one person known as, say, Mary, and another as Mary-Liz, etc, and there's long been so many Marys in Ireland that some of these have become separate first names in their own right - Mary-Ann, Mary-Lou, etc, but it happens with male names too.
The other thing that happens is variations on the name: John, Johnny, Jo, John-Jo, etc.
I have an extremely unusual first name, which is apparently sometimes unpronounceable.
My paternal grandmother's idea apparently; my maternal grandmother said something to the effect of give him something that people will will know and use.
I've never used my second name, always my first!
I suppose “Old” is an unusual first name. I wouldn’t have thought it was unpronounceable, though.
Once again, Hunt needs to be radical and make the next budget the budget for workers. £12.50 minimum wage, end all in working subsidies and move to additional household or personal tax allowance for families, no more perverse incentives to work 16h per week to hold on to benefits because the taper is so high. End the child benefit taper, end the £100k allowance withdrawal taper.
Increase taxes on rentseeking - higher rates of income tax for unearned income, NI on unearned income, CGT on non primary residential property pushed up to income tax rates, stamp duty surcharge on additional property purchases pushed up to 10% from 3% and a new wealth tax of 6% charged every 10 years on a person's personal wealth excluding their primary residence and a reasonable allowance of say £200k (mirroring how discretionary trusts are taxed). Wealth tax includes ISAs and pension assets, DB pensions taxed at DC equivalent pot size rates.
A wealth tax would encourage risk taking as a person's wealth would need a minimum capital return to ensure their overall wealth doesn't decrease during their lifetime.
I think one of the lessons of the 'mini-budget' fiasco is that it isn't wise to make big changes to the whole taxation system in one budget with no political mandate to do so.
No, the learning is to ensure there is a credible forecast that shows debt falling over the medium term. As long as the measures make working people better off, discourages rent seeking and keeps the debt ratio falling I expect markets will be happy and debt yields to drop off further.
The three line whip/making the fracking vote a confidence issue is insane right? Not only is it completely against the 2019 Manifesto fracking policy, tens to hundreds of Tory MPs will have to backtrack or rebel. Given how many of them know they're buggered with Truss if I were them I'd still vote against.
Making
Putting a gun to their own bollocks and saying to backbenchers "don't make us pull the trigger".
Nobody wants fracking. Any MP who votes for this against the wishes of their constituents guarantees their own defeat.
What is it with these PMs who go by their middle names? Mary Truss, Alexander Johnson and James Brown. At least you can see why James "Sex Machine" Brown might have chosen to go by Gordon. Is it that common among normal people?
I can see why it might happen in an extended family, or workplace/school, if you have several people with the same first name, that they might come to be known by their second name. Though I can't think of an example in my own family.
The West Cork tradition is often to combine first and second names where there is duplication. So there might be one person known as, say, Mary, and another as Mary-Liz, etc, and there's long been so many Marys in Ireland that some of these have become separate first names in their own right - Mary-Ann, Mary-Lou, etc, but it happens with male names too.
The other thing that happens is variations on the name: John, Johnny, Jo, John-Jo, etc.
I have an extremely unusual first name, which is apparently sometimes unpronounceable.
My paternal grandmother's idea apparently; my maternal grandmother said something to the effect of give him something that people will will know and use.
I've never used my second name, always my first!
Good morning, Plantagenet.
Sorry, wrong. More unusual!
Heliogabalus? Wenceslaus? Is it a regal-type name?
What is it with these PMs who go by their middle names? Mary Truss, Alexander Johnson and James Brown. At least you can see why James "Sex Machine" Brown might have chosen to go by Gordon. Is it that common among normal people?
I can see why it might happen in an extended family, or workplace/school, if you have several people with the same first name, that they might come to be known by their second name. Though I can't think of an example in my own family.
The West Cork tradition is often to combine first and second names where there is duplication. So there might be one person known as, say, Mary, and another as Mary-Liz, etc, and there's long been so many Marys in Ireland that some of these have become separate first names in their own right - Mary-Ann, Mary-Lou, etc, but it happens with male names too.
The other thing that happens is variations on the name: John, Johnny, Jo, John-Jo, etc.
I have an extremely unusual first name, which is apparently sometimes unpronounceable.
My paternal grandmother's idea apparently; my maternal grandmother said something to the effect of give him something that people will will know and use.
I've never used my second name, always my first!
I suppose “Old” is an unusual first name. I wouldn’t have thought it was unpronounceable, though.
Having reflected on some of the discussions that I have read on here, I've come around to the view that the best way forward is for a form of NI to be payable on all forms of income. This would include pensions, dividend income, capital gains etc.
In the interests of fairness and to avoid hardship, the actual rate payable could be varied based on total personal income; but the total amount should be at least 13.5% in the case of pensioners who have an income that is higher than the median average wage, but for those who are relying on the state pension, or have a very small private pension the rate should be zero. This would be the core revenue raising part of the policy.
The flipside of this would be that the state pension would rise slightly, and the triple lock would remain - and is paid universally. So the policy would benefit a majority of pensioners.
Politically I think a revolt of wealthy pensioners would be comical and counterproductive. Their mouths have been stuffed with gold for too long.
Is your last paragraph right? The alleged stuffing is the triple lock on the STATE pension which is irrelevant because it is pocket money to anyone describable by any stretch as wealthy. What else? Bus passes?
If the state pension is your main source of income, it isn't that great; it just covers your living costs, assuming that you have housing sorted out. The policy is targeted at those pensioners receiving the state pension plus significant incomes through either a) defined benefit or private pensions or b) savings and investments. I'm suggesting they should just pay an extra circa 13.5% tax. In the case of the very wealthy it would have the effect of negating the state pension, they just pay it back in tax. So the policy just really targets the very rich who don't really need the state pension.
Yeah i am not against your plan, I have proposed an alternative assault on the universality of the state pension elsewhere in the thread. My question was what breaks are wealthy pensioners getting at present?
No NI on earned income if they still work, no NI on pension income, dividend tax rates are lower than income tax rates.
First point valid, second misses the point of NI, third point div tax PLUS corp tax is the relevant measure - rare genuine example of taxing the same money twice.
Second is perfectly valid, the point of NI is to raise money for the Exchequer. Wealthy pensioners should pay their fair share too.
For the latter a rare genuine example? Examples happen all the time.
Someone who works for a living has their remuneration taxed three times: Employers NI + Employee NI + Income Tax. If we're abolishing "secondary" taxes, we should certainly abolish tertiary ones.
Or VAT on fuel duty. Not just a tax, but taxing a tax.
The thing about pensions is that you pay national insurance on your pension contributions (but you don't pay income tax), so that's always been the logical justification for only levying income tax on the pension paid - you've already paid the NI due, as pensions are deferred income.
This probably doesn't quite work for DB pensions if the contributions don't fully cover the cost of the payouts. So perhaps there's an argument for charging NI on DB pensions that aren't fully funded. But if pensions are simply deferred income then it doesn't make sense to charge NI on them twice.
NI is charged twice on incomes, Employers and Employees.
Sucks for anyone who thought they'd evade it in the future if they no longer do, but shit happens.
Maybe I'm more sick than I thought. Aren't I the lefty?
I'm not opposed to taxing people more, but just on the mechanisms with taxing pensions the deal has always been to encourage pension saving, so that people are not wholly reliant on the State when they're too old to work. If you tax pension income on the way in, and on the way out, that will discourage pension saving and you'll end up with less pension saving, probably less saving in general, and more pensioners more reliant on the state when they're incapable of working.
Is that really the outcome you want?
I'm not wholly opposed to taxing pensioners more, but there's a risk that you make saving for a pension a way of losing money and then people will stop doing it.
But any other investment gets taxed on the way in, and the way out, too - people still invest in alternatives.
If you get paid you get taxed on that, if you use your taxed income to invest in BTL property, then later sell that property, you get taxed CGT on that, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
If you get paid and used your taxed income to invest in stocks, then later get dividends or sell those stocks, you get taxed on the way out, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
If you get paid and used your taxed income to invest in setting up a business, which later makes a profit, you get taxed on your profits, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
Taxation never stops, because the state's expenditure never stops. All money is always taxed later on. Why, uniquely, should pensioners incomes uniquely of all investments be exempt from taxation on a double taxation principle when any other incomes from investments would be taxed?
All forms of saving, and all forms of investment, and all forms of income, should be treated fairly and consistently.
Well the reason to specifically give tax exemption to pensions is to encourage people to lock away their money for decades. And other forms of investment are also encouraged by tax exemptions of one sort or another, such as with ISAs.
If you tax pensions more then you discourage pension saving, then people will put their money somewhere else - perhaps property? You could drive house prices up even higher.
I agree that wealthy pensioners are an obvious source of extra tax income, but I think we have to be careful about how to raise that tax so as not to create the wrong incentives. I don't think that discouraging pension saving is the right incentive for the British economy. We already save too little, and invest too much into housing, then is healthy for the economy. We shouldn't make that worse.
That's a separate argument.
If you want to argue savings should be encouraged, and there's a case for that, then make that argument. But don't pretend that pensions are "deferred incomes" or "already taxed" when they're not, they're new incomes made supposedly from investments (but often not remotely fully funded) which have not yet been taxed and are not presently getting taxed at the full rate either.
Future incomes, even if derived from income invested from taxed incomes, are always traditionally taxed so there's no "double taxation" point of principle here.
Like I said, my head is spinning, and I don't know whether it's the fever or this discussion.
I'm sure that when I've previously made the case for restricting pension tax relief to the basic rate (this was John Smith's proposed tax increase that became the 1992GE tax bombshell) that PB Righties have deplored my Communistic attempt to seize private property by taxing income twice, on the basis that pensions were deferred income.
Here I am, about a decade later, making the same argument for the sake of pedantry, and it's a pair of PB Righties who want to soak pension savings. Has the Overton Window really shifted that far left? How did that happen?
The reality of the situation has changed. A wealth tax to include pensions and ISAs makes sense because there are now a huge number of people who have badly deployed pension and ISA wealth that is ripe for taxing. As the evidence has shifted, so had my position on wealth taxes.
The three line whip/making the fracking vote a confidence issue is insane right? Not only is it completely against the 2019 Manifesto fracking policy, tens to hundreds of Tory MPs will have to backtrack or rebel. Given how many of them know they're buggered with Truss if I were them I'd still vote against.
Making
Putting a gun to their own bollocks and saying to backbenchers "don't make us pull the trigger".
Nobody wants fracking. Any MP who votes for this against the wishes of their constituents guarantees their own defeat.
As may be. You can't lose control of the Commons order paper, as May found out.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box. You can hardly blame an opposition party for shooting at a goal which has been left wide open by the government's idiocy. Liz Truss should never have gone down the politically impossible route of re-opening fracking as an issue
Once again, Labour has forced the fracking vote to be a 3 line whip by the Gov't. It's Labour playing (& Playing well it must be said) politics.
It's got to be about the worst possible policy on which the Tories have to force a 3 line whip.
Something few (if any voters) want and something no Tory MP will want on the Lib Dem / Labour leaflet at the next election - and they have to vote for it.
Why is everyone referring to the left and right banks of the Dneiper (And every other river in Ukraine) ???
Are we facing north or toward the sea ?
It's incredibly annoying habit that rybar, tryxa and uncle Tom cobley's sitrep reports etc are into.
Facing downstream.
With a meandering river the same bank of the river can be on the western or eastern side at different points, and if you don't know where you are this can be seriously misleading. You can almost always see which way the river is flowing, and so left/right banks are much clearer.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box. You can hardly blame an opposition party for shooting at a goal which has been left wide open by the government's idiocy. Liz Truss should never have gone down the politically impossible route of re-opening fracking as an issue
Yes, can't blame the opposition for opposing. It's the government that needs to withdraw the fracking bill for which it has no mandate.
Ukrainian Army's offensife confirmed by Russian source Rybar. According to the Rybar, the Ukrainian Army opened two fronts at Dudchany and Davydiv Brid in the northeast of Kherson. https://twitter.com/BarracudaVol1/status/1582674069396168706
Good news. But I am still concerned with the “news” overnight re. Putins next steps. Losing Kherson is going to be an utter humiliation for him
NEW: Message to Tory MPs from deputy chief whip Craig Whittaker declares that this afternoon's vote on fracking (Labour want to ban it for good) is "a confidence motion in the Government".
Lots of Tory MPs are opposed to fracking in their areas.
'Fracking caused an earthquake every day at the UK’s only active site at Preston New Road in Lancashire, analysis has found.
Between 2018 and 2019, the site near Blackpool was responsible for 192 earthquakes over the course of 182 days , according to analysis of House of Commons Library data by the Liberal Democrats.[...]
There are understood to be at least 40 Tories who are vocally against fracking, and the Guardian understands a letter, signed by dozens saying they could not support fracking, has been delivered to the business and energy secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg.'
There's plenty of arguments against fracking but are these 'earthquakes' really doing any harm? They are tiny. I've never noticed anything from the site at Misson (Notts).
It would be nice to have a sane discussion about issues of this kind.
Market Rasen in 2008 was a proper earthquake (and entirely natural).
All's fair in politics ... but do bear in mind that that is from a (IIRC) single well, not a whole array of the kind that would be needed for actual production.
It might be 'fair' in politics but exaggerated arguments on one side only enable them on the other.
By arguing in this way it allows JRM to dismiss anti-frackers as loons (see: Dartford Bridge).
I don't want to see fracking sites covering the whole of North Notts either but a balanced discussion would be nice.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box. You can hardly blame an opposition party for shooting at a goal which has been left wide open by the government's idiocy. Liz Truss should never have gone down the politically impossible route of re-opening fracking as an issue
Yes, can't blame the opposition for opposing. It's the government that needs to withdraw the fracking bill for which it has no mandate.
It's worse than "no mandate"; they actually opposed the idea!
In the Commons tea room, the mood is mutinous. Even newer MPs normally reluctant to stick their heads above the parapet are telling the whips she should go. Members of the Old Guard are in despair, not least at the calibre of the Cabinet. “There needs to be a total clear-out and the return of experienced, wiser, greyer heads,” said one.
Telegrph
Boris cleared out nearly all the old guard. The destruction of the Tories starts with him. Truss is simply a symptom. HYUFD thinks he is their winner, whereas Boris is the cause of their collapse.
No he isn't, the Labour lead was half what it is now when Boris left No 10
What part of 'starts' don't you get? What part of 'simply a symptom ' don't you get?
Yep Labour lead was half then. So what. He created the mess that has led to Truss with his half baked Brexit, his lies, his corruption, his attempts to corrupt the constitution. He is the cause of this mess. The Tories are now relying on one of the sane old guard to finally stop the slide.
Truss is simply a symptom of the destruction Boris caused.
No, it is Truss and her mini budget which has led to this not Boris.
Tory MPs listening to whingers like you and BigG got rid of the best Tory PM since Thatcher and ensures the Tories likely face a decade or more in opposition
You are just wrong. It is difficult to imagine how wrong you can be. Truss is there because the Tories removed Boris. Why do you think they did that? Nobody else could. Why do you think you are right and they are wrong and they could see his corruption at first hand.
Yes so Truss would not be there as PM if Tory MPs had listened to me and kept Boris not you and BigG
I can assure you not a single Tory MP listened to me nor BigG, They did this all by themselves, because of the mess Boris had got them into.
If Boris was still there the lies and corruption and the disruption due to those lies and corruption will still be going on and the Tory vote would be where it is now or even lower.
No it wouldn't, Boris' net favourability with the public was 44% higher than that for Truss yesterday and indeed also 5% higher than that for Hunt too
That is because he hasn't been PM all this time standing there lying, corrupting, etc. Do you think all that stuff was going to go away if he stayed. It would have been the same now (if not worse) as it was the weeks before he stood down and during all this time the polls would have gone down and down with all the understandable Tory infighting.
As usual you are comparing Apples with Suspension Bridges.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box. You can hardly blame an opposition party for shooting at a goal which has been left wide open by the government's idiocy. Liz Truss should never have gone down the politically impossible route of re-opening fracking as an issue
That's the point. Labour, LDs, SNP (and most Tories) are opposed to fracking. Why in the heck would you offer them this opportunity? The "political fallout" is entirely of the Government's making. Is it even "playing politics" if the Opposition actually believe in the motion they are tabling?
Nigel Lawson wrote a pamphlet in 1988 on the Thatcher government's progress on tax reform. It's well worth reading because it highlights some of the ways in which things have gone wrong since Brown.
...we had to dispel the notion that the way to economic success lies through a sort of fiscal levitation. That was the abiding post-war delusion – that governments could spend and borrow their way to prosperity, and fine-tune the performance of the economy through something known pretentiously as demand management.
It may be hard to remember, but it used to be an Establishment nostrum that you need a budget deficit to get economic growth. That was the belief which lay behind the notorious letter by 364 economists in March 1981. We have given the lie to that, decisively. There can no longer be any argument about it.
-----
The key objective is to reduce marginal tax rates. That is what makes the extra pound worth earning, without recourse to tax dodges; and that, in the long run, is what matters for incentives.
NEW: Message to Tory MPs from deputy chief whip Craig Whittaker declares that this afternoon's vote on fracking (Labour want to ban it for good) is "a confidence motion in the Government".
Lots of Tory MPs are opposed to fracking in their areas.
'Fracking caused an earthquake every day at the UK’s only active site at Preston New Road in Lancashire, analysis has found.
Between 2018 and 2019, the site near Blackpool was responsible for 192 earthquakes over the course of 182 days , according to analysis of House of Commons Library data by the Liberal Democrats.[...]
There are understood to be at least 40 Tories who are vocally against fracking, and the Guardian understands a letter, signed by dozens saying they could not support fracking, has been delivered to the business and energy secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg.'
There's plenty of arguments against fracking but are these 'earthquakes' really doing any harm? They are tiny. I've never noticed anything from the site at Misson (Notts).
It would be nice to have a sane discussion about issues of this kind.
Market Rasen in 2008 was a proper earthquake (and entirely natural).
All's fair in politics ... but do bear in mind that that is from a (IIRC) single well, not a whole array of the kind that would be needed for actual production.
It might be 'fair' in politics but exaggerated arguments on one side only enable them on the other.
By arguing in this way it allows JRM to dismiss anti-frackers as loons (see: Dartford Bridge).
I don't want to see fracking sites covering the whole of North Notts either but a balanced discussion would be nice.
I am being balanced. A test well is one thing, but a production array of dozens or hundreds will be worse by roughly that factor (but bearing in mind that seismic scales are logarithmic). And that is not going to reassure people, which is partly the issue here.
Having reflected on some of the discussions that I have read on here, I've come around to the view that the best way forward is for a form of NI to be payable on all forms of income. This would include pensions, dividend income, capital gains etc.
In the interests of fairness and to avoid hardship, the actual rate payable could be varied based on total personal income; but the total amount should be at least 13.5% in the case of pensioners who have an income that is higher than the median average wage, but for those who are relying on the state pension, or have a very small private pension the rate should be zero. This would be the core revenue raising part of the policy.
The flipside of this would be that the state pension would rise slightly, and the triple lock would remain - and is paid universally. So the policy would benefit a majority of pensioners.
Politically I think a revolt of wealthy pensioners would be comical and counterproductive. Their mouths have been stuffed with gold for too long.
Is your last paragraph right? The alleged stuffing is the triple lock on the STATE pension which is irrelevant because it is pocket money to anyone describable by any stretch as wealthy. What else? Bus passes?
If the state pension is your main source of income, it isn't that great; it just covers your living costs, assuming that you have housing sorted out. The policy is targeted at those pensioners receiving the state pension plus significant incomes through either a) defined benefit or private pensions or b) savings and investments. I'm suggesting they should just pay an extra circa 13.5% tax. In the case of the very wealthy it would have the effect of negating the state pension, they just pay it back in tax. So the policy just really targets the very rich who don't really need the state pension.
Yeah i am not against your plan, I have proposed an alternative assault on the universality of the state pension elsewhere in the thread. My question was what breaks are wealthy pensioners getting at present?
No NI on earned income if they still work, no NI on pension income, dividend tax rates are lower than income tax rates.
First point valid, second misses the point of NI, third point div tax PLUS corp tax is the relevant measure - rare genuine example of taxing the same money twice.
Second is perfectly valid, the point of NI is to raise money for the Exchequer. Wealthy pensioners should pay their fair share too.
For the latter a rare genuine example? Examples happen all the time.
Someone who works for a living has their remuneration taxed three times: Employers NI + Employee NI + Income Tax. If we're abolishing "secondary" taxes, we should certainly abolish tertiary ones.
Or VAT on fuel duty. Not just a tax, but taxing a tax.
The thing about pensions is that you pay national insurance on your pension contributions (but you don't pay income tax), so that's always been the logical justification for only levying income tax on the pension paid - you've already paid the NI due, as pensions are deferred income.
This probably doesn't quite work for DB pensions if the contributions don't fully cover the cost of the payouts. So perhaps there's an argument for charging NI on DB pensions that aren't fully funded. But if pensions are simply deferred income then it doesn't make sense to charge NI on them twice.
NI is charged twice on incomes, Employers and Employees.
Sucks for anyone who thought they'd evade it in the future if they no longer do, but shit happens.
Maybe I'm more sick than I thought. Aren't I the lefty?
I'm not opposed to taxing people more, but just on the mechanisms with taxing pensions the deal has always been to encourage pension saving, so that people are not wholly reliant on the State when they're too old to work. If you tax pension income on the way in, and on the way out, that will discourage pension saving and you'll end up with less pension saving, probably less saving in general, and more pensioners more reliant on the state when they're incapable of working.
Is that really the outcome you want?
I'm not wholly opposed to taxing pensioners more, but there's a risk that you make saving for a pension a way of losing money and then people will stop doing it.
But any other investment gets taxed on the way in, and the way out, too - people still invest in alternatives.
If you get paid you get taxed on that, if you use your taxed income to invest in BTL property, then later sell that property, you get taxed CGT on that, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
If you get paid and used your taxed income to invest in stocks, then later get dividends or sell those stocks, you get taxed on the way out, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
If you get paid and used your taxed income to invest in setting up a business, which later makes a profit, you get taxed on your profits, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
Taxation never stops, because the state's expenditure never stops. All money is always taxed later on. Why, uniquely, should pensioners incomes uniquely of all investments be exempt from taxation on a double taxation principle when any other incomes from investments would be taxed?
All forms of saving, and all forms of investment, and all forms of income, should be treated fairly and consistently.
Well the reason to specifically give tax exemption to pensions is to encourage people to lock away their money for decades. And other forms of investment are also encouraged by tax exemptions of one sort or another, such as with ISAs.
If you tax pensions more then you discourage pension saving, then people will put their money somewhere else - perhaps property? You could drive house prices up even higher.
I agree that wealthy pensioners are an obvious source of extra tax income, but I think we have to be careful about how to raise that tax so as not to create the wrong incentives. I don't think that discouraging pension saving is the right incentive for the British economy. We already save too little, and invest too much into housing, then is healthy for the economy. We shouldn't make that worse.
That's a separate argument.
If you want to argue savings should be encouraged, and there's a case for that, then make that argument. But don't pretend that pensions are "deferred incomes" or "already taxed" when they're not, they're new incomes made supposedly from investments (but often not remotely fully funded) which have not yet been taxed and are not presently getting taxed at the full rate either.
Future incomes, even if derived from income invested from taxed incomes, are always traditionally taxed so there's no "double taxation" point of principle here.
Like I said, my head is spinning, and I don't know whether it's the fever or this discussion.
I'm sure that when I've previously made the case for restricting pension tax relief to the basic rate (this was John Smith's proposed tax increase that became the 1992GE tax bombshell) that PB Righties have deplored my Communistic attempt to seize private property by taxing income twice, on the basis that pensions were deferred income.
Here I am, about a decade later, making the same argument for the sake of pedantry, and it's a pair of PB Righties who want to soak pension savings. Has the Overton Window really shifted that far left? How did that happen?
The reality of the situation has changed. A wealth tax to include pensions and ISAs makes sense because there are now a huge number of people who have badly deployed pension and ISA wealth that is ripe for taxing. As the evidence has shifted, so had my position on wealth taxes.
I put this through Google translate and it gave me "as I have a relatively high income and relatively low level of wealth my position is that income taxes are bad and wealth taxes are good."
Having reflected on some of the discussions that I have read on here, I've come around to the view that the best way forward is for a form of NI to be payable on all forms of income. This would include pensions, dividend income, capital gains etc.
In the interests of fairness and to avoid hardship, the actual rate payable could be varied based on total personal income; but the total amount should be at least 13.5% in the case of pensioners who have an income that is higher than the median average wage, but for those who are relying on the state pension, or have a very small private pension the rate should be zero. This would be the core revenue raising part of the policy.
The flipside of this would be that the state pension would rise slightly, and the triple lock would remain - and is paid universally. So the policy would benefit a majority of pensioners.
Politically I think a revolt of wealthy pensioners would be comical and counterproductive. Their mouths have been stuffed with gold for too long.
Is your last paragraph right? The alleged stuffing is the triple lock on the STATE pension which is irrelevant because it is pocket money to anyone describable by any stretch as wealthy. What else? Bus passes?
If the state pension is your main source of income, it isn't that great; it just covers your living costs, assuming that you have housing sorted out. The policy is targeted at those pensioners receiving the state pension plus significant incomes through either a) defined benefit or private pensions or b) savings and investments. I'm suggesting they should just pay an extra circa 13.5% tax. In the case of the very wealthy it would have the effect of negating the state pension, they just pay it back in tax. So the policy just really targets the very rich who don't really need the state pension.
Yeah i am not against your plan, I have proposed an alternative assault on the universality of the state pension elsewhere in the thread. My question was what breaks are wealthy pensioners getting at present?
No NI on earned income if they still work, no NI on pension income, dividend tax rates are lower than income tax rates.
First point valid, second misses the point of NI, third point div tax PLUS corp tax is the relevant measure - rare genuine example of taxing the same money twice.
Second is perfectly valid, the point of NI is to raise money for the Exchequer. Wealthy pensioners should pay their fair share too.
For the latter a rare genuine example? Examples happen all the time.
Someone who works for a living has their remuneration taxed three times: Employers NI + Employee NI + Income Tax. If we're abolishing "secondary" taxes, we should certainly abolish tertiary ones.
Or VAT on fuel duty. Not just a tax, but taxing a tax.
The thing about pensions is that you pay national insurance on your pension contributions (but you don't pay income tax), so that's always been the logical justification for only levying income tax on the pension paid - you've already paid the NI due, as pensions are deferred income.
This probably doesn't quite work for DB pensions if the contributions don't fully cover the cost of the payouts. So perhaps there's an argument for charging NI on DB pensions that aren't fully funded. But if pensions are simply deferred income then it doesn't make sense to charge NI on them twice.
NI is charged twice on incomes, Employers and Employees.
Sucks for anyone who thought they'd evade it in the future if they no longer do, but shit happens.
Maybe I'm more sick than I thought. Aren't I the lefty?
I'm not opposed to taxing people more, but just on the mechanisms with taxing pensions the deal has always been to encourage pension saving, so that people are not wholly reliant on the State when they're too old to work. If you tax pension income on the way in, and on the way out, that will discourage pension saving and you'll end up with less pension saving, probably less saving in general, and more pensioners more reliant on the state when they're incapable of working.
Is that really the outcome you want?
I'm not wholly opposed to taxing pensioners more, but there's a risk that you make saving for a pension a way of losing money and then people will stop doing it.
But any other investment gets taxed on the way in, and the way out, too - people still invest in alternatives.
If you get paid you get taxed on that, if you use your taxed income to invest in BTL property, then later sell that property, you get taxed CGT on that, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
If you get paid and used your taxed income to invest in stocks, then later get dividends or sell those stocks, you get taxed on the way out, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
If you get paid and used your taxed income to invest in setting up a business, which later makes a profit, you get taxed on your profits, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
Taxation never stops, because the state's expenditure never stops. All money is always taxed later on. Why, uniquely, should pensioners incomes uniquely of all investments be exempt from taxation on a double taxation principle when any other incomes from investments would be taxed?
All forms of saving, and all forms of investment, and all forms of income, should be treated fairly and consistently.
Well the reason to specifically give tax exemption to pensions is to encourage people to lock away their money for decades. And other forms of investment are also encouraged by tax exemptions of one sort or another, such as with ISAs.
If you tax pensions more then you discourage pension saving, then people will put their money somewhere else - perhaps property? You could drive house prices up even higher.
I agree that wealthy pensioners are an obvious source of extra tax income, but I think we have to be careful about how to raise that tax so as not to create the wrong incentives. I don't think that discouraging pension saving is the right incentive for the British economy. We already save too little, and invest too much into housing, then is healthy for the economy. We shouldn't make that worse.
That's a separate argument.
If you want to argue savings should be encouraged, and there's a case for that, then make that argument. But don't pretend that pensions are "deferred incomes" or "already taxed" when they're not, they're new incomes made supposedly from investments (but often not remotely fully funded) which have not yet been taxed and are not presently getting taxed at the full rate either.
Future incomes, even if derived from income invested from taxed incomes, are always traditionally taxed so there's no "double taxation" point of principle here.
Like I said, my head is spinning, and I don't know whether it's the fever or this discussion.
I'm sure that when I've previously made the case for restricting pension tax relief to the basic rate (this was John Smith's proposed tax increase that became the 1992GE tax bombshell) that PB Righties have deplored my Communistic attempt to seize private property by taxing income twice, on the basis that pensions were deferred income.
Here I am, about a decade later, making the same argument for the sake of pedantry, and it's a pair of PB Righties who want to soak pension savings. Has the Overton Window really shifted that far left? How did that happen?
The reality of the situation has changed. A wealth tax to include pensions and ISAs makes sense because there are now a huge number of people who have badly deployed pension and ISA wealth that is ripe for taxing. As the evidence has shifted, so had my position on wealth taxes.
I think a tax on exceptionally high pensions is well overdue. The problem is that it isn't going to happen because high earning public sector workers who are the main greedy recipients of such pensions are the payroll vote for Labour. Plus the politicians themselves also benefit from such arrangements
Senior Tory MPs have told Express.co.uk it is “now common knowledge” that Mr Hunt is organising a reshuffle of Ms Truss’ ministerial team.
Doesn't Truss have to go for her own self-respect now?
Its tricky.
Go now and she is by some distance the shortest serving PM. Very embarrassing.
Stick around and have Hunt do whatever he wants and ignore her. Very embarrassing.
I think avoiding the former is something she would bear a lot for.
Seems to me that Truss has already lost control. She's the PM in name only. Now either she regains control, but then won't we just be back where we were at the start of October with a PM and Chancellor who want to drive ideological tax cuts for tax cuts sake; or she doesn't regain control, in which case why hasn't she been removed?
It seems to me the MPs will not want Truss to front a General Election, so they have to remove her before that. If they want her to go up that list of tenure for PMs (on Wikipedia) then they could leave her in place for a year or so to beat Home, but what would be the point of that except to stroke her ego? Unless they want all the bad news on 'her' watch and then replace her with Hunt/Sunak/Mordaunt/whoever in early 2024 if things have started to turn around? Truss gets all the blame, Hunt all the credit and a slender win in October 2024 might be possible?
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box. You can hardly blame an opposition party for shooting at a goal which has been left wide open by the government's idiocy. Liz Truss should never have gone down the politically impossible route of re-opening fracking as an issue
That's the point. Labour, LDs, SNP (and most Tories) are opposed to fracking. Why in the heck would you offer them this opportunity? The "political fallout" is entirely of the Government's making. Is it even "playing politics" if the Opposition actually believe in the motion they are tabling?
Stress monkey testing* of party loyalty?
*No idea what it is. But one of us used it yesterday and it sounds great.
Kevin Schofield @KevinASchofield · 13m Labour source tells HuffPost UK: “It’s the first ever example of MPs being told they will bring down the government if they vote against a manifesto commitment. I think Liz Truss needs to sit down in a darkened room for a bit.”
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Even if I'm not grasping some sort of 4D chess from Team Truss on this, at the very least pissing off a good chunk of your back bench over what is basically a weirdo Britannia Unchained shibboleth that has very little impact either way in real life does not seem like good politics.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box. You can hardly blame an opposition party for shooting at a goal which has been left wide open by the government's idiocy. Liz Truss should never have gone down the politically impossible route of re-opening fracking as an issue
That's the point. Labour, LDs, SNP (and most Tories) are opposed to fracking. Why in the heck would you offer them this opportunity? The "political fallout" is entirely of the Government's making. Is it even "playing politics" if the Opposition actually believe in the motion they are tabling?
Stress monkey testing* of party loyalty?
*No idea what it is. But one of us used it yesterday and it sounds great.
This PMQs is going to be so so awkward. I think I’ll be watching it between my fingers.
I’ve rescheduled a meeting so I can watch PMQs.
I've rescheduled a meeting so I can't. 😉
We did all* warn you Truss would be shit
*Except Leondarmus.
I don't care, still glad she won the leadership election. She abolished the Health and Social Care Levy. 👍
I said all along I thought that Truss would be unpopular and would lose the election, but I didn't care. You know how much I opposed the Health and Social Care Levy, you published my article on that.
If you offer me a Faustian pact where I get to choose: Rishi wins and the Tories win the next election, with the Health and Social Care Levy introduced, or Truss wins and the Tories lose the next election, with the Health and Social Care Levy scrapped, then I would not sell my soul to win the next election.
I have my principles, if you don't like them, don't ask for my vote.
Except she’s destroyed a tax cutting agenda for at least a decade if not longer.
You’ve thrown out the baby with the bath water.
Starmer may also not be Corbyn but he is not Blair either. His government assuming he is elected will be the most leftwing in the UK since the Wilson and Callaghan government of the 1970s and taxes will be much higher for higher earners and the wealthy especially
He doesn't have Blair's political judgement either - he seems to have his luck, judging by the last couple of months, but luck is a fickle mistress.
The reality of the situation has changed. A wealth tax to include pensions and ISAs makes sense because there are now a huge number of people who have badly deployed pension and ISA wealth that is ripe for taxing. As the evidence has shifted, so had my position on wealth taxes.
I put this through Google translate and it gave me "as I have a relatively high income and relatively low level of wealth my position is that income taxes are bad and wealth taxes are good."
High income taxes do work against social mobility, but I agree that @MaxPB shows a vindictive streak in his attitude to taxation that wouldn't be out of place in a Socialist Workers Party meeting.
Nigel Lawson wrote a pamphlet in 1988 on the Thatcher government's progress on tax reform. It's well worth reading because it highlights some of the ways in which things have gone wrong since Brown.
...we had to dispel the notion that the way to economic success lies through a sort of fiscal levitation. That was the abiding post-war delusion – that governments could spend and borrow their way to prosperity, and fine-tune the performance of the economy through something known pretentiously as demand management.
It may be hard to remember, but it used to be an Establishment nostrum that you need a budget deficit to get economic growth. That was the belief which lay behind the notorious letter by 364 economists in March 1981. We have given the lie to that, decisively. There can no longer be any argument about it.
-----
The key objective is to reduce marginal tax rates. That is what makes the extra pound worth earning, without recourse to tax dodges; and that, in the long run, is what matters for incentives.
Those are lofty sentiments from a guy whose idiotic macro policies blew up the housing market and wrecked the public finances.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
Does it? LIke the local consent to the London Olympics and post-Olympics developments? And the wider Trussian threat to abolish planning controls wholesale?
"Consider" all too often includes "placing in the round metal filing cabinet with an open top".
In the Commons tea room, the mood is mutinous. Even newer MPs normally reluctant to stick their heads above the parapet are telling the whips she should go. Members of the Old Guard are in despair, not least at the calibre of the Cabinet. “There needs to be a total clear-out and the return of experienced, wiser, greyer heads,” said one.
Telegrph
Boris cleared out nearly all the old guard. The destruction of the Tories starts with him. Truss is simply a symptom. HYUFD thinks he is their winner, whereas Boris is the cause of their collapse.
No he isn't, the Labour lead was half what it is now when Boris left No 10
What part of 'starts' don't you get? What part of 'simply a symptom ' don't you get?
Yep Labour lead was half then. So what. He created the mess that has led to Truss with his half baked Brexit, his lies, his corruption, his attempts to corrupt the constitution. He is the cause of this mess. The Tories are now relying on one of the sane old guard to finally stop the slide.
Truss is simply a symptom of the destruction Boris caused.
No, it is Truss and her mini budget which has led to this not Boris.
Tory MPs listening to whingers like you and BigG got rid of the best Tory PM since Thatcher and ensures the Tories likely face a decade or more in opposition
You are just wrong. It is difficult to imagine how wrong you can be. Truss is there because the Tories removed Boris. Why do you think they did that? Nobody else could. Why do you think you are right and they are wrong and they could see his corruption at first hand.
Yes so Truss would not be there as PM if Tory MPs had listened to me and kept Boris not you and BigG
I can assure you not a single Tory MP listened to me nor BigG, They did this all by themselves, because of the mess Boris had got them into.
If Boris was still there the lies and corruption and the disruption due to those lies and corruption will still be going on and the Tory vote would be where it is now or even lower.
No it wouldn't, Boris' net favourability with the public was 44% higher than that for Truss yesterday and indeed also 5% higher than that for Hunt too
That is because he hasn't been PM all this time standing there lying, corrupting, etc. Do you think all that stuff was going to go away if he stayed. It would have been the same now (if not worse) as it was the weeks before he stood down and during all this time the polls would have gone down and down with all the understandable Tory infighting.
As usual you are comparing Apples with Suspension Bridges.
The last Opinium poll taken mostly before Boris resigned had the Labour lead at 5%, the Labour lead is now 21% with the same pollster.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
The thing you don't understand is that No one is going to read or care about the detail. The leaflet will say (On October 19 2022) the Tory Candidate voted to allow Fracking in this area- with a picture of the local beauty spot.
Now some of that is an exaggeration (fully allowed under UK electoral law) but the core fact that he voted to allow fracking is true and that is all that matters.
Actually the main effect of Labour's sneaky move on fracking will be to increase the feeling amongst Tory MPs that Liz Truss has to go, given that this mess is entirely of her creation. In that sense, maybe it's not such a smart move after all.
I know the Gov't is hardly blameless for their own predicament but does anyone else think the journalists are a bit piranhas with ADHD ? They seem desperate to move the news cycle on every 5 minutes.
Nigel Lawson wrote a pamphlet in 1988 on the Thatcher government's progress on tax reform. It's well worth reading because it highlights some of the ways in which things have gone wrong since Brown.
...we had to dispel the notion that the way to economic success lies through a sort of fiscal levitation. That was the abiding post-war delusion – that governments could spend and borrow their way to prosperity, and fine-tune the performance of the economy through something known pretentiously as demand management.
It may be hard to remember, but it used to be an Establishment nostrum that you need a budget deficit to get economic growth. That was the belief which lay behind the notorious letter by 364 economists in March 1981. We have given the lie to that, decisively. There can no longer be any argument about it.
-----
The key objective is to reduce marginal tax rates. That is what makes the extra pound worth earning, without recourse to tax dodges; and that, in the long run, is what matters for incentives.
Those are lofty sentiments from a guy whose idiotic macro policies blew up the housing market and wrecked the public finances.
That is a criticism that you would also have to level at Gordon Brown, but whereas Lawson made tactical mistakes that left an overall positive legacy, Brown made strategic mistakes that left a poisonous legacy.
If this passes, does Truss go to the King and advise him to invite Sir Keir to form a government? He would obviously have the confidence of the Commons, demonstrated by it having voted for him to control its business.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
The thing you don't understand is that No one is going to read or care about the detail. The leaflet will say (On October 19 2022) the Tory Candidate voted to allow Fracking in this area- with a picture of the local beauty spot.
Now some of that is an exaggeration (fully allowed under UK electoral law) but the core fact that he voted to allow fracking is true and that is all that matters.
And add a pic of one of those endless arrays of production wells covering the landscape.
I know the Gov't is hardly blameless for their own predicament but does anyone else think the journalists are a bit piranhas with ADHD ? They seem desperate to move the news cycle on every 5 minutes.
You mean, the Tories haven't been doing their best to keep ahead of the hacks?
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
The thing you don't understand is that No one is going to read or care about the detail. The leaflet will say (On October 19 2022) the Tory Candidate voted to allow Fracking in this area- with a picture of the local beauty spot.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
In which case, why are the Tories putting it there in the first place? They know it's unpopular, and just further trashing their brand for nothing.
Having reflected on some of the discussions that I have read on here, I've come around to the view that the best way forward is for a form of NI to be payable on all forms of income. This would include pensions, dividend income, capital gains etc.
In the interests of fairness and to avoid hardship, the actual rate payable could be varied based on total personal income; but the total amount should be at least 13.5% in the case of pensioners who have an income that is higher than the median average wage, but for those who are relying on the state pension, or have a very small private pension the rate should be zero. This would be the core revenue raising part of the policy.
The flipside of this would be that the state pension would rise slightly, and the triple lock would remain - and is paid universally. So the policy would benefit a majority of pensioners.
Politically I think a revolt of wealthy pensioners would be comical and counterproductive. Their mouths have been stuffed with gold for too long.
Is your last paragraph right? The alleged stuffing is the triple lock on the STATE pension which is irrelevant because it is pocket money to anyone describable by any stretch as wealthy. What else? Bus passes?
If the state pension is your main source of income, it isn't that great; it just covers your living costs, assuming that you have housing sorted out. The policy is targeted at those pensioners receiving the state pension plus significant incomes through either a) defined benefit or private pensions or b) savings and investments. I'm suggesting they should just pay an extra circa 13.5% tax. In the case of the very wealthy it would have the effect of negating the state pension, they just pay it back in tax. So the policy just really targets the very rich who don't really need the state pension.
Yeah i am not against your plan, I have proposed an alternative assault on the universality of the state pension elsewhere in the thread. My question was what breaks are wealthy pensioners getting at present?
No NI on earned income if they still work, no NI on pension income, dividend tax rates are lower than income tax rates.
First point valid, second misses the point of NI, third point div tax PLUS corp tax is the relevant measure - rare genuine example of taxing the same money twice.
Second is perfectly valid, the point of NI is to raise money for the Exchequer. Wealthy pensioners should pay their fair share too.
For the latter a rare genuine example? Examples happen all the time.
Someone who works for a living has their remuneration taxed three times: Employers NI + Employee NI + Income Tax. If we're abolishing "secondary" taxes, we should certainly abolish tertiary ones.
Or VAT on fuel duty. Not just a tax, but taxing a tax.
The thing about pensions is that you pay national insurance on your pension contributions (but you don't pay income tax), so that's always been the logical justification for only levying income tax on the pension paid - you've already paid the NI due, as pensions are deferred income.
This probably doesn't quite work for DB pensions if the contributions don't fully cover the cost of the payouts. So perhaps there's an argument for charging NI on DB pensions that aren't fully funded. But if pensions are simply deferred income then it doesn't make sense to charge NI on them twice.
NI is charged twice on incomes, Employers and Employees.
Sucks for anyone who thought they'd evade it in the future if they no longer do, but shit happens.
Maybe I'm more sick than I thought. Aren't I the lefty?
I'm not opposed to taxing people more, but just on the mechanisms with taxing pensions the deal has always been to encourage pension saving, so that people are not wholly reliant on the State when they're too old to work. If you tax pension income on the way in, and on the way out, that will discourage pension saving and you'll end up with less pension saving, probably less saving in general, and more pensioners more reliant on the state when they're incapable of working.
Is that really the outcome you want?
I'm not wholly opposed to taxing pensioners more, but there's a risk that you make saving for a pension a way of losing money and then people will stop doing it.
But any other investment gets taxed on the way in, and the way out, too - people still invest in alternatives.
If you get paid you get taxed on that, if you use your taxed income to invest in BTL property, then later sell that property, you get taxed CGT on that, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
If you get paid and used your taxed income to invest in stocks, then later get dividends or sell those stocks, you get taxed on the way out, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
If you get paid and used your taxed income to invest in setting up a business, which later makes a profit, you get taxed on your profits, despite having already been taxed on the way in.
Taxation never stops, because the state's expenditure never stops. All money is always taxed later on. Why, uniquely, should pensioners incomes uniquely of all investments be exempt from taxation on a double taxation principle when any other incomes from investments would be taxed?
All forms of saving, and all forms of investment, and all forms of income, should be treated fairly and consistently.
Well the reason to specifically give tax exemption to pensions is to encourage people to lock away their money for decades. And other forms of investment are also encouraged by tax exemptions of one sort or another, such as with ISAs.
If you tax pensions more then you discourage pension saving, then people will put their money somewhere else - perhaps property? You could drive house prices up even higher.
I agree that wealthy pensioners are an obvious source of extra tax income, but I think we have to be careful about how to raise that tax so as not to create the wrong incentives. I don't think that discouraging pension saving is the right incentive for the British economy. We already save too little, and invest too much into housing, then is healthy for the economy. We shouldn't make that worse.
That's a separate argument.
If you want to argue savings should be encouraged, and there's a case for that, then make that argument. But don't pretend that pensions are "deferred incomes" or "already taxed" when they're not, they're new incomes made supposedly from investments (but often not remotely fully funded) which have not yet been taxed and are not presently getting taxed at the full rate either.
Future incomes, even if derived from income invested from taxed incomes, are always traditionally taxed so there's no "double taxation" point of principle here.
Like I said, my head is spinning, and I don't know whether it's the fever or this discussion.
I'm sure that when I've previously made the case for restricting pension tax relief to the basic rate (this was John Smith's proposed tax increase that became the 1992GE tax bombshell) that PB Righties have deplored my Communistic attempt to seize private property by taxing income twice, on the basis that pensions were deferred income.
Here I am, about a decade later, making the same argument for the sake of pedantry, and it's a pair of PB Righties who want to soak pension savings. Has the Overton Window really shifted that far left? How did that happen?
The reality of the situation has changed. A wealth tax to include pensions and ISAs makes sense because there are now a huge number of people who have badly deployed pension and ISA wealth that is ripe for taxing. As the evidence has shifted, so had my position on wealth taxes.
I put this through Google translate and it gave me "as I have a relatively high income and relatively low level of wealth my position is that income taxes are bad and wealth taxes are good."
If that's what you think then sure, I'm almost certain that I'd be caught up in any wealth tax but don't let that stop you from spouting off.
The reality of the situation has changed. A wealth tax to include pensions and ISAs makes sense because there are now a huge number of people who have badly deployed pension and ISA wealth that is ripe for taxing. As the evidence has shifted, so had my position on wealth taxes.
I put this through Google translate and it gave me "as I have a relatively high income and relatively low level of wealth my position is that income taxes are bad and wealth taxes are good."
High income taxes do work against social mobility, but I agree that @MaxPB shows a vindictive streak in his attitude to taxation that wouldn't be out of place in a Socialist Workers Party meeting.
Wealth taxes have their place but they're really just deferred income taxes. With wealth taxes you will end up getting taxed when you earn money, taxed when you spend it, and taxed in between too. And people with a lot of wealth will be able to shield it, so it will end up just being a tax on elderly middle class people. The best way forward is to reform council tax so it is more linear in actual property valuations, but I don't think I'd go beyond that. The real problem for the young is the high cost of housing - to buy and to rent - and that should be tackled at source.
Actually the main effect of Labour's sneaky move on fracking will be to increase the feeling amongst Tory MPs that Liz Truss has to go, given that this mess is entirely of her creation. In that sense, maybe it's not such a smart move after all.
I guess they're punting on a general election being called. Constant switching of leaders - with quite broad policy differences - is a travesty of democracy, let alone severely hamstringing the actual running of the country. The public will increasingly want a say - I don't think they'll get one though.
Why are Labour briefing that they have target ads ready to go on fracking vote?
Just let the trap work before telling journos the details of your scheming.
Because now the Tory party have announced it's a confidence vote - it really doesn't matter if Labour win or lose the vote.
Win the vote and Truss is gone. Lose the vote and the Tories have done a 180 on a manifesto commitment whilst destroying their chances in a lot of rural seats that might still have voted Tory just enough for the Tory candidate to squeak through.
If you were going to pick the worst possible battle to fight over - this, really is it.
This lot couldn't run a Hornby O gauge clockwork train set like I could when I was 5. Though admittedly e-scootersa are a PITA.
Graun feed:
'Plans to create Great British Railways, a public sector body to oversee Britain’s railways, have been delayed, MPs have been told.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, told the Commons transport committee that the transport bill, which would have set up the new body, has been delayed because legislation to deal with the energy crisis is being prioritised. She said:
The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that [bill] in this third session.
What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow ill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.'
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
The thing you don't understand is that No one is going to read or care about the detail. The leaflet will say (On October 19 2022) the Tory Candidate voted to allow Fracking in this area- with a picture of the local beauty spot.
Labour are going to lie?
The Tories have been doing it for years aided by their arse licking right wing papers . Labour don’t need to be lectured on morality and standards .
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
In which case, why are the Tories putting it there in the first place? They know it's unpopular, and just further trashing their brand for nothing.
Because when there is an energy shortage, they want to be able to say that they've tried things.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Even if I'm not grasping some sort of 4D chess from Team Truss on this, at the very least pissing off a good chunk of your back bench over what is basically a weirdo Britannia Unchained shibboleth that has very little impact either way in real life does not seem like good politics.
There is no 4D chess. The fracking reversal decision is just part of the same peculiar mindset that thought it's a good idea, politically or economically, to give tax-cuts to millionaires whilst hammering those less well off. Instead now we have the hammering of local communities for the (low probability) profits of small groups of speculators.
Fracking was the first clear signal with Truss, in power, that she was properly bonkers and so it goes on until Tory MPs do the decent thing by the country and chuck her out.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
The thing you don't understand is that No one is going to read or care about the detail. The leaflet will say (On October 19 2022) the Tory Candidate voted to allow Fracking in this area- with a picture of the local beauty spot.
Labour are going to lie?
The Tories have been doing it for years aided by their arse licking right wing papers . Labour don’t need to be lectured on morality and standards .
This lot couldn't run a Hornby O gauge clockwork train set like I could when I was 5. Though admittedly e-scootersa are a PITA.
Graun feed:
'Plans to create Great British Railways, a public sector body to oversee Britain’s railways, have been delayed, MPs have been told.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, told the Commons transport committee that the transport bill, which would have set up the new body, has been delayed because legislation to deal with the energy crisis is being prioritised. She said:
The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that [bill] in this third session.
What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow ill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.'
GBR was quietly scrapped a couple of weeks ago (I would need to go and find the announcement but there was one that made GBR an irrelevance). It's going to upset a few towns who were hoping for some nice jobs though.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
The thing you don't understand is that No one is going to read or care about the detail. The leaflet will say (On October 19 2022) the Tory Candidate voted to allow Fracking in this area- with a picture of the local beauty spot.
Labour are going to lie?
The Tories have been doing it for years aided by their arse licking right wing papers . Labour don’t need to be lectured on morality and standards .
That's quite a long winded way of saying "yes".
It’s about time Labour realized that you have to play the Tories at their own game so yes !
....and in a coup for Channel 4's "Make Me Prime Minister", today they have secured access to the Chamber to film the first of their try out candidates, a Liz Truss from Leeds, attempt Prime Minister's Questions.
This lot couldn't run a Hornby O gauge clockwork train set like I could when I was 5. Though admittedly e-scootersa are a PITA.
Graun feed:
'Plans to create Great British Railways, a public sector body to oversee Britain’s railways, have been delayed, MPs have been told.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, told the Commons transport committee that the transport bill, which would have set up the new body, has been delayed because legislation to deal with the energy crisis is being prioritised. She said:
The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that [bill] in this third session.
What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow ill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.'
GBR was quietly scrapped a couple of weeks ago (I would need to go and find the announcement but there was one that made GBR an irrelevance). It's going to upset a few towns who were hoping for some nice jobs though.
Oh, I missed that - but it's overt now anyway. Poor Mr Shapps and all those municipalities putting in for applications to be HQ.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
The thing you don't understand is that No one is going to read or care about the detail. The leaflet will say (On October 19 2022) the Tory Candidate voted to allow Fracking in this area- with a picture of the local beauty spot.
Labour are going to lie?
I would imagine they would just say "The Tories" if the specific candidate didn't vote for it. Not quite as impactful, but avoids the problem.
Actually the main effect of Labour's sneaky move on fracking will be to increase the feeling amongst Tory MPs that Liz Truss has to go, given that this mess is entirely of her creation. In that sense, maybe it's not such a smart move after all.
Country before Party.
Also, rushing the Tories into getting rid of Truss before they've united around a replacement probably maximises the chaos of the transition and the chances of installing the wrong person to replace her, and helps to tie the blame for the austerity coming to the new PM, rather than Liz 'Scapegoat' Truss.
Nigel Lawson wrote a pamphlet in 1988 on the Thatcher government's progress on tax reform. It's well worth reading because it highlights some of the ways in which things have gone wrong since Brown.
...we had to dispel the notion that the way to economic success lies through a sort of fiscal levitation. That was the abiding post-war delusion – that governments could spend and borrow their way to prosperity, and fine-tune the performance of the economy through something known pretentiously as demand management.
It may be hard to remember, but it used to be an Establishment nostrum that you need a budget deficit to get economic growth. That was the belief which lay behind the notorious letter by 364 economists in March 1981. We have given the lie to that, decisively. There can no longer be any argument about it.
-----
The key objective is to reduce marginal tax rates. That is what makes the extra pound worth earning, without recourse to tax dodges; and that, in the long run, is what matters for incentives.
Yes, finding and exploiting massive hydrocarbon deposits also works.
NEW: Message to Tory MPs from deputy chief whip Craig Whittaker declares that this afternoon's vote on fracking (Labour want to ban it for good) is "a confidence motion in the Government".
Lots of Tory MPs are opposed to fracking in their areas.
'Fracking caused an earthquake every day at the UK’s only active site at Preston New Road in Lancashire, analysis has found.
Between 2018 and 2019, the site near Blackpool was responsible for 192 earthquakes over the course of 182 days , according to analysis of House of Commons Library data by the Liberal Democrats.[...]
There are understood to be at least 40 Tories who are vocally against fracking, and the Guardian understands a letter, signed by dozens saying they could not support fracking, has been delivered to the business and energy secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg.'
There's plenty of arguments against fracking but are these 'earthquakes' really doing any harm? They are tiny. I've never noticed anything from the site at Misson (Notts).
It would be nice to have a sane discussion about issues of this kind.
Market Rasen in 2008 was a proper earthquake (and entirely natural).
All's fair in politics ... but do bear in mind that that is from a (IIRC) single well, not a whole array of the kind that would be needed for actual production.
It might be 'fair' in politics but exaggerated arguments on one side only enable them on the other.
By arguing in this way it allows JRM to dismiss anti-frackers as loons (see: Dartford Bridge).
I don't want to see fracking sites covering the whole of North Notts either but a balanced discussion would be nice.
I am being balanced. A test well is one thing, but a production array of dozens or hundreds will be worse by roughly that factor (but bearing in mind that seismic scales are logarithmic). And that is not going to reassure people, which is partly the issue here.
That's the point, though. Thousands of tiny earthquakes cannot add up to the effects of one big one.
As I say, I'm not keen on industrialising the place (which is essentially a local planning question) and I'm not definitely not accusing you of being unbalanced, but there is a lot of noise on this subject that is not entirely helpful.
Still, the one thing it is definitely going to blow up is Liz Truss. She does seem to collect land mines.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
The thing you don't understand is that No one is going to read or care about the detail. The leaflet will say (On October 19 2022) the Tory Candidate voted to allow Fracking in this area- with a picture of the local beauty spot.
Labour are going to lie?
The Tories have been doing it for years aided by their arse licking right wing papers . Labour don’t need to be lectured on morality and standards .
That's quite a long winded way of saying "yes".
It’s about time Labour realized that you have to play the Tories at their own game so yes !
If we're going to accept a liar in Number Ten then why not bring Boris back?
This lot couldn't run a Hornby O gauge clockwork train set like I could when I was 5. Though admittedly e-scootersa are a PITA.
Graun feed:
'Plans to create Great British Railways, a public sector body to oversee Britain’s railways, have been delayed, MPs have been told.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, told the Commons transport committee that the transport bill, which would have set up the new body, has been delayed because legislation to deal with the energy crisis is being prioritised. She said:
The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that [bill] in this third session.
What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow ill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.'
It *had already been delayed* because very little of substance had been done to progress this. GBR was the "Shapps-Williams plan". Shapps has gone. So has his plan.
It's stupid political game playing of the sort that is entirely unnecessary in the circumstances.
Well, from Labour's point of view it's a game which will reap rewards at the ballot box.
Not really, they're winning a landslide anyway. And they're guaranteeing that they'll face the same sort of nonsense back when they do.
Today they've probably just given the Lib Dem's 15-30 seats that would previously have been winnable with a different Tory leader.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Let's have a look at what the government is actually proposing:
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
In which case, why are the Tories putting it there in the first place? They know it's unpopular, and just further trashing their brand for nothing.
Because when there is an energy shortage, they want to be able to say that they've tried things.
So why haven't they put lots of money into fusion research? That's about as relevant this winter.
The reality of the situation has changed. A wealth tax to include pensions and ISAs makes sense because there are now a huge number of people who have badly deployed pension and ISA wealth that is ripe for taxing. As the evidence has shifted, so had my position on wealth taxes.
I put this through Google translate and it gave me "as I have a relatively high income and relatively low level of wealth my position is that income taxes are bad and wealth taxes are good."
High income taxes do work against social mobility, but I agree that @MaxPB shows a vindictive streak in his attitude to taxation that wouldn't be out of place in a Socialist Workers Party meeting.
Wealth taxes have their place but they're really just deferred income taxes. With wealth taxes you will end up getting taxed when you earn money, taxed when you spend it, and taxed in between too. And people with a lot of wealth will be able to shield it, so it will end up just being a tax on elderly middle class people. The best way forward is to reform council tax so it is more linear in actual property valuations, but I don't think I'd go beyond that. The real problem for the young is the high cost of housing - to buy and to rent - and that should be tackled at source.
I don't see how 6% every 10 years would cause ructions in the economy or have ultra rich shield their wealth. In fact all this would do is mirror the arrangement the ultra wealthy use because discretionary trusts have the same wealth tax mechanism.
Council tax is collected and spent locally, so what we'd get is London and SE councils with huge revenue and northern ones with low revenue. A wealth tax would be collected and spent nationally. I'm shocked that I'm having to convince you of the benefits of taxing wealth rather than taxing working people's income.
What is it with these PMs who go by their middle names? Mary Truss, Alexander Johnson and James Brown. At least you can see why James "Sex Machine" Brown might have chosen to go by Gordon. Is it that common among normal people?
I can see why it might happen in an extended family, or workplace/school, if you have several people with the same first name, that they might come to be known by their second name. Though I can't think of an example in my own family.
The West Cork tradition is often to combine first and second names where there is duplication. So there might be one person known as, say, Mary, and another as Mary-Liz, etc, and there's long been so many Marys in Ireland that some of these have become separate first names in their own right - Mary-Ann, Mary-Lou, etc, but it happens with male names too.
The other thing that happens is variations on the name: John, Johnny, Jo, John-Jo, etc.
I have an extremely unusual first name, which is apparently sometimes unpronounceable.
My paternal grandmother's idea apparently; my maternal grandmother said something to the effect of give him something that people will will know and use.
I've never used my second name, always my first!
Good morning, Plantagenet.
Sorry, wrong. More unusual!
Heliogabalus? Wenceslaus? Is it a regal-type name?
Once again, Hunt needs to be radical and make the next budget the budget for workers. £12.50 minimum wage, end all in working subsidies and move to additional household or personal tax allowance for families, no more perverse incentives to work 16h per week to hold on to benefits because the taper is so high. End the child benefit taper, end the £100k allowance withdrawal taper.
Increase taxes on rentseeking - higher rates of income tax for unearned income, NI on unearned income, CGT on non primary residential property pushed up to income tax rates, stamp duty surcharge on additional property purchases pushed up to 10% from 3% and a new wealth tax of 6% charged every 10 years on a person's personal wealth excluding their primary residence and a reasonable allowance of say £200k (mirroring how discretionary trusts are taxed). Wealth tax includes ISAs and pension assets, DB pensions taxed at DC equivalent pot size rates.
A wealth tax would encourage risk taking as a person's wealth would need a minimum capital return to ensure their overall wealth doesn't decrease during their lifetime.
I think one of the lessons of the 'mini-budget' fiasco is that it isn't wise to make big changes to the whole taxation system in one budget with no political mandate to do so.
No, the learning is to ensure there is a credible forecast that shows debt falling over the medium term. As long as the measures make working people better off, discourages rent seeking and keeps the debt ratio falling I expect markets will be happy and debt yields to drop off further.
Perhaps. But it would lead to immense economic disruption (massive and unaffordable rise in the wage bill for low wage employers), and probably be inflationary as a result, and lead to mass unemployment. Politically it would also attack two groups dispropotionately (benefit recipients and the very wealthy). People who already earn £12.50 an hour would find themselves regraded as minimum wage workers, can't see them being too happy about that. Unfortunately the politics of this kind of change doesn't work, in a similar way that the politics of the cut to the 45p income tax rate didn't work.
Comments
However, I was explaining the rationale for dividend tax being what it is.
Ukrainian Army's offensife confirmed by Russian source Rybar. According to the Rybar, the Ukrainian Army opened two fronts at Dudchany and Davydiv Brid in the northeast of Kherson.
https://twitter.com/BarracudaVol1/status/1582674069396168706
Making
And reintroduced austerity because it's the extra borrowing costs she's created mean that governmental cutbacks are now unavoidable.
Which Tory MP in a marginal fracking seat is going to put loyalty to Liz Truss over loyalty to their constituents? What lunatic is putting together this strategy?
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1582677714997514240
I doubt labour would take in any defectors, so the calculation is a bit harder for red wall mps.
https://twitter.com/HistoryToday/status/1582649002331627520
Nobody wants fracking. Any MP who votes for this against the wishes of their constituents guarantees their own defeat.
LOL
Something few (if any voters) want and something no Tory MP will want on the Lib Dem / Labour leaflet at the next election - and they have to vote for it.
With a meandering river the same bank of the river can be on the western or eastern side at different points, and if you don't know where you are this can be seriously misleading. You can almost always see which way the river is flowing, and so left/right banks are much clearer.
By arguing in this way it allows JRM to dismiss anti-frackers as loons (see: Dartford Bridge).
I don't want to see fracking sites covering the whole of North Notts either but a balanced discussion would be nice.
Last night, Liz Truss tried to woo Tory MPs over wine and mini Yorkshire puddings.
One mole tells me everyone was very receptive during the reception - but within moments of leaving started saying she had to go.
https://t.co/ClubeRKBBz
https://twitter.com/JackElsom/status/1582678180074508288
As usual you are comparing Apples with Suspension Bridges.
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/109507
...we had to dispel the notion that the way to economic success lies through a sort of fiscal levitation. That was the abiding post-war delusion – that governments could spend and borrow their way to prosperity, and fine-tune the performance of the economy through something known pretentiously as demand management.
It may be hard to remember, but it used to be an Establishment nostrum that you need a budget deficit to get economic growth. That was the belief which lay behind the notorious letter by 364 economists in March 1981. We have given the lie to that, decisively. There can no longer be any argument about it.
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The key objective is to reduce marginal tax rates. That is what makes the extra pound worth earning, without recourse to tax dodges; and that, in the long run, is what matters for incentives.
But now every Tory MP is going to go into the next election trying to explain why they want fracking in their area.
Now either she regains control, but then won't we just be back where we were at the start of October with a PM and Chancellor who want to drive ideological tax cuts for tax cuts sake; or she doesn't regain control, in which case why hasn't she been removed?
It seems to me the MPs will not want Truss to front a General Election, so they have to remove her before that.
If they want her to go up that list of tenure for PMs (on Wikipedia) then they could leave her in place for a year or so to beat Home, but what would be the point of that except to stroke her ego?
Unless they want all the bad news on 'her' watch and then replace her with Hunt/Sunak/Mordaunt/whoever in early 2024 if things have started to turn around? Truss gets all the blame, Hunt all the credit and a slender win in October 2024 might be possible?
*No idea what it is. But one of us used it yesterday and it sounds great.
Kevin Schofield
@KevinASchofield
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13m
Labour source tells HuffPost UK: “It’s the first ever example of MPs being told they will bring down the government if they vote against a manifesto commitment. I think Liz Truss needs to sit down in a darkened room for a bit.”
Source point out that at 50% she has in essence lost the confidence and would not need a vote.
https://twitter.com/CatNeilan/status/1582675601114046464
to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.
Which effectively means no fracking.
https://twitter.com/nmdacosta/status/1582594590607298560
"Consider" all too often includes "placing in the round metal filing cabinet with an open top".
Most voters other than those like you who had always hated Boris anyway did not care he had a few after work drinks in his garden or ate a birthday cake
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Graphical_summary
Just let the trap work before telling journos the details of your scheming.
Now some of that is an exaggeration (fully allowed under UK electoral law) but the core fact that he voted to allow fracking is true and that is all that matters.
They seem desperate to move the news cycle on every 5 minutes.
Win the vote and Truss is gone.
Lose the vote and the Tories have done a 180 on a manifesto commitment whilst destroying their chances in a lot of rural seats that might still have voted Tory just enough for the Tory candidate to squeak through.
If you were going to pick the worst possible battle to fight over - this, really is it.
Graun feed:
'Plans to create Great British Railways, a public sector body to oversee Britain’s railways, have been delayed, MPs have been told.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, told the Commons transport committee that the transport bill, which would have set up the new body, has been delayed because legislation to deal with the energy crisis is being prioritised. She said:
The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that [bill] in this third session.
What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow ill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.'
Fracking was the first clear signal with Truss, in power, that she was properly bonkers and so it goes on until Tory MPs do the decent thing by the country and chuck her out.
Also, rushing the Tories into getting rid of Truss before they've united around a replacement probably maximises the chaos of the transition and the chances of installing the wrong person to replace her, and helps to tie the blame for the austerity coming to the new PM, rather than Liz 'Scapegoat' Truss.
The investigation into the deaths of newborn at East Kent Trust hospitals found that 45 of the 65 baby deaths could have been avoided
That is shocking
So-called "head" of Kherson region Kirill Stremousov offers France and Germany to hold referenda and join Russia.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1582679399731990528
As I say, I'm not keen on industrialising the place (which is essentially a local planning question) and I'm not definitely not accusing you of being unbalanced, but there is a lot of noise on this subject that is not entirely helpful.
Still, the one thing it is definitely going to blow up is Liz Truss. She does seem to collect land mines.
Council tax is collected and spent locally, so what we'd get is London and SE councils with huge revenue and northern ones with low revenue. A wealth tax would be collected and spent nationally. I'm shocked that I'm having to convince you of the benefits of taxing wealth rather than taxing working people's income.
“Is the US better prepared for a nuclear blast today than it was 60 years ago?
Despite advances in technology and decades of research, experts worry we are still underprepared to handle a blast – and the aftermath”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/19/nuclear-bomb-us-fallout-shelters
(Do I remember you mentioning some Welsh mining roots at some point? Might have completely made that up)
ETA: If we don't guess your name by morning, do you get to take our firstborns?