Labour planning to scrap tax-breaks for private schools. Unfortunate tactical rather than strategic thinking. What happens when those who can no longer afford private schools send them to local schools instead?
The Conservatives crashed the economy and now threaten to make deep cuts to school budgets.
What happens is that with more rich middle class people using them they get more funding.
This is the sort of fallacious nonsense - that pushy middle class parents automatically lead to much better state schools - that is truly believed on the Left, isn't it?
It's your equivalent of the dogmatic faith in grammar schools being the answer to all education problems on the right.
Have Labour yet demonstrated that it will be a net positive once they have paid the extra costs to educate children forced out of the independent sector into state schools?
I'd suggest that the policy is crude populism, which will undermine educational opportunities for many who don't fit the relatively boilerplate state model.
Nor am I convinced by the "The Conservatives crashed the economy" line. That doesn't stand up very well when we start making international comparisons with our peers. But it's not clear that anyone will be listening.
Yep, and it won't. What it will do is drive up house prices near very good state schools and create a new micro industry of private tutoring.
It will absolutely nothing for improving educational outcomes or increasing the tax take. It will also lead to reduced employment in the education sector.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
Its utter bullshit. Everything has already been taxed.
Taxation never ends, because the state's expenditure never ends.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
I don't get the duty back on a bottle of gin because I am paying for it with already-taxed income.
On Braverman’s return I’m reminded of the return of the first subject of the opening movement at the start of the second movement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, just when you’ve been led to think it’s been vanquished by the love theme. The impact is equally startling and horrifying.
Another day of almost 500 troops losses for Russia according to Ukraine. I know this is propaganda but if anywhere close to these figures then how is it sustainable? Their mobilised men are being rapidly destroyed as cannon fodder.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies." Alexander Pope
Aren't we up to the destruction of the 10,000th tank by now according to Ukranian sources ?
No. The number is somewhere between the independently verified Orxy number of 1,420 (who acknowledge they are not complete) and the Ukraine claim of 2,628. Say 1,800 as a reasonable base case.
That Russia is reduced to trundling out its museum pieces from the 1960's suggests Russia isn't exactly overstocked with T-80s and T-90s.
On Braverman, Monbiot once again points out today something that almost the entire rest of of the press have, staggeringly, missed. Under her Public Order Bill going through last week, anyone can be fitted with an "electronic monitoring device" for having attended a "disruptive" protest in the last 12 months, with any "disruption" already having been redefined by earlier legislation in 2022 to include noise. So in fact, under the Public Order Bill, you could be fitted with an electronic tag just for having attended any noisy protest within the last year.
Forgive me, but at a quick read that just looks like the 2876th edition of the boilerplate Monbiot rantathon.
Has he explained his proposals for preventing the damage caused by the Just Stop Oil goons, or alternatively giving them some education to help them make a coherent case? I have yet to see it.
Well, I think that would come under a similar heading to Patel's justifications for having new legislation earlier in the year. Current legislation is reasonably adequate to deal with various types of protest.
I wouldn't say we all need to be under threat of wearing electronic tags just for having attended any noisy protest, as Braverman is staggeringly planning.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
I think Anneliese Dodd's has clearly forgotten about Liz Truss, and the previous 2 female Tory PMs, already. Selectively forgetting the fact that Labour have never had anyone as a leader other than white, middle-aged men.
Just one in five of the ministers around Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet table are women.
I know the Conservatives struggle to add up, but women make up half the population.
The objective is stable house prices. Neither a boom nor a crash.
That's a noble objective, but experience shows that when you aim for stability, you often create even bigger problems. Gordon Brown came into vowing not to let house prices get out of control and then proceeded to oversee the inflation of the major part of the bubble we are still living with.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
People with equity, investments and property pay very little tax. So do non-doms and the super wealthy. Corporations take the biscuit.
I remember how my wife told me, who's a commercial lawyer, that when we bought out our detached family home we paid over four times as much stamp duty as a multimillion pound business recently did for purchasing a large commercial property - a deal she worked on.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
I'm well aware that I have no equity as a result of paying my landlords mortgage for the last seven years.
The point of my question was that it is very easy to wish negative equity on other people, and I wondered to what extent you would accept it for yourself.
Generally speaking a crash in prices would result in a disordered market and is best avoided. Also, if nothing is done about the fundamental incentives to invest in property rather than other assets, all a crash does is to prepare the stage for another boom. Normal people will get burned on the way down and on the way up.
I'm of like mind when it comes to a home being a home and not an investment, but you make that change by modifying the long-term investment incentives, not by willing on the damage of a short-term house price crash that would ultimately change nothing.
The objective is stable house prices. Neither a boom nor a crash.
Post bubble bursting stability would absolutely be ideal and the Bank of England should be given responsibility to take house prices into account as inflation when it determines interest rates in the future. Indeed given the direct link between interest rates and house prices is far greater than between CPI and interest rates, there'd be a good argument to be made that replacing CPI of 2% with house price stability as the Bank's mandate would make far more sense. But only post bubble bursting.
At first glance that looks like a fantastic suggestion.
I think the bubble could be helped to deflate by removal of the many government policies which drive house prices forever upwards, aimed at creating an orderly market.
I'm still a fan of a Swiss style low rate but progressive asset taxes on house value for nearly everyone. Plus replacing Council Tax with something similar, and probably abolishing Stamp Duty Land Tax. The latter two are encompassed in the Proportional Property Tax proposals.
Interest rates returning to normal will help, anyway.
Another day of almost 500 troops losses for Russia according to Ukraine. I know this is propaganda but if anywhere close to these figures then how is it sustainable? Their mobilised men are being rapidly destroyed as cannon fodder.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies." Alexander Pope
The objective is stable house prices. Neither a boom nor a crash.
That's a noble objective, but experience shows that when you aim for stability, you often create even bigger problems. Gordon Brown came into vowing not to let house prices get out of control and then proceeded to oversee the inflation of the major part of the bubble we are still living with.
Because the Bank of England uses CPI which is designed with homeowners in mind instead of house prices as its inflation target. Despite CPI not being directly affected by interest rates and house prices are.
The Bank could have house price stability at a target for interest rate decisions, not inflation excluding the one bit of inflation that's actually linked to interest rates.
Inflation never went away, it just went into housing instead of a homeowner's consumer goods, which those owning housing saw as a positive instead of a negative. Inflation in housing is not "better" than inflation in electricity bills.
The objective is stable house prices. Neither a boom nor a crash.
That's a noble objective, but experience shows that when you aim for stability, you often create even bigger problems. Gordon Brown came into vowing not to let house prices get out of control and then proceeded to oversee the inflation of the major part of the bubble we are still living with.
Are you saying that it's a bit odd for a right-wing Conservative to try to control the economy?
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
I think that living expenses are too high. This means that people feel the burden of taxation more heavily. If you can reduce living costs then it's easier to tolerate the same level of taxation.
The other effect is that, in part, high living costs are a result of it being too easy to make money by rent-seeking, so capital doesn't have to achieve productivity gains to make a profitable return, it simply has to own assets.
So if you can tackle rent-seeking then you can create a double benefit. You reduce living costs and increase living standards without having to cut public spending, and you encourage capital to be used to increase productivity, which should increase growth and living standards further.
The focus of public policy debates on taxation and public spending is all wrong.
I think there's a lot of truth in that, but rent/mortgage prices are only one aspect of living costs.
By "rent-seeking" I include things like water charges from the water monopolies, or the CPI + 3.9% clauses in so many telecommunications contracts, etc. It dominates the entire British economy. It's not just what is literally called "rent".
True, but I think it extends to capitalism generally. I like to hold VWRL just for the feeling that literally 100,000s of people are beavering away at all hours of the day and night on my behalf, so i don't have to.
Yes. In a similar way that every bureaucracy will tend towards waste and inefficiency and it requires constant vigilance to keep it under control. So it is that capitalism will tend towards rent-seeking and monopoly and this requires constant vigilance to counteract.
Off for my COVID autumn booster - anyone had side effects?
Delusion. For a short while thereafter I had this absurd notion that Liz Truss was Prime Minister. It was ok though, the delusional side effect wore off after 45 days.
It was more of a pain in the arm than the earlier vaccinations. Nothing else.
Off for my COVID autumn booster - anyone had side effects?
Delusion. For a short while thereafter I had this absurd notion that Liz Truss was Prime Minister. It was ok though, the delusional side effect wore off after 45 days.
It was more of a pain in the arm than the earlier vaccinations. Nothing else.
Mine is at 11.30 this morning. Number 4 for me and so far side effects have been very mild on all previous jabs. Also had flu jab on Saturday with no side effects at all.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
I think that living expenses are too high. This means that people feel the burden of taxation more heavily. If you can reduce living costs then it's easier to tolerate the same level of taxation.
The other effect is that, in part, high living costs are a result of it being too easy to make money by rent-seeking, so capital doesn't have to achieve productivity gains to make a profitable return, it simply has to own assets.
So if you can tackle rent-seeking then you can create a double benefit. You reduce living costs and increase living standards without having to cut public spending, and you encourage capital to be used to increase productivity, which should increase growth and living standards further.
The focus of public policy debates on taxation and public spending is all wrong.
I think there's a lot of truth in that, but rent/mortgage prices are only one aspect of living costs.
By "rent-seeking" I include things like water charges from the water monopolies, or the CPI + 3.9% clauses in so many telecommunications contracts, etc. It dominates the entire British economy. It's not just what is literally called "rent".
True, but I think it extends to capitalism generally. I like to hold VWRL just for the feeling that literally 100,000s of people are beavering away at all hours of the day and night on my behalf, so i don't have to.
Yes. In a similar way that every bureaucracy will tend towards waste and inefficiency and it requires constant vigilance to keep it under control. So it is that capitalism will tend towards rent-seeking and monopoly and this requires constant vigilance to counteract.
I suggest creating a Ministry for Administrative Affairs.
Stepping back from the row on here about tax vs spend, isn't there a simple reality:
Inequality means that the high cost of living forces spending forces taxation. If we had less inequality then we would need less £££ for public services and less taxation.
There are millions of people who no matter how hard they work or how many hours they do only just get by - or don't even manage to do that. Work doesn't pay the bills due to a combination of low pay and high bills. So the state has to step in, subsiding the wages of the low paid and having to provide support services for all the things they can't afford to do.
So I have no problem at all cutting corporation tax, but the quid pro quo needed to be that big companies stop being twunt employers. Pay your people a good wage, invest in training and development and you can have a lower tax bill. That way pay goes up and the demand for expensive support services goes down.
We used to have this - it was capitalism. Business invested in its employees and in the local economy so that people were happy and productive. Now we have bankism where wages and rights are cut to the bone and people live in shitty communities, then the same companies / politicians complain about low productivity.
We could fix this. But the people syphoning all the cash out of the economy to drive the inequality that makes them rich own most of the politicians. So we don't.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
I'm well aware that I have no equity as a result of paying my landlords mortgage for the last seven years.
The point of my question was that it is very easy to wish negative equity on other people, and I wondered to what extent you would accept it for yourself.
Generally speaking a crash in prices would result in a disordered market and is best avoided. Also, if nothing is done about the fundamental incentives to invest in property rather than other assets, all a crash does is to prepare the stage for another boom. Normal people will get burned on the way down and on the way up.
I'm of like mind when it comes to a home being a home and not an investment, but you make that change by modifying the long-term investment incentives, not by willing on the damage of a short-term house price crash that would ultimately change nothing.
The objective is stable house prices. Neither a boom nor a crash.
I'm prepared to accept it for myself, yes.
An orderly market would be best if we were in an orderly situation, we're not, we're at the peak of a bubble that has to burst.
Post bubble bursting stability would absolutely be ideal and the Bank of England should be given responsibility to take house prices into account as inflation when it determines interest rates in the future. Indeed given the direct link between interest rates and house prices is far greater than between CPI and interest rates, there'd be a good argument to be made that replacing CPI of 2% with house price stability as the Bank's mandate would make far more sense. But only post bubble bursting.
Off for my COVID autumn booster - anyone had side effects?
Delusion. For a short while thereafter I had this absurd notion that Liz Truss was Prime Minister. It was ok though, the delusional side effect wore off after 45 days.
It was more of a pain in the arm than the earlier vaccinations. Nothing else.
Mine is at 11.30 this morning. Number 4 for me and so far side effects have been very mild on all previous jabs. Also had flu jab on Saturday with no side effects at all.
On Sunday my wife and I go for no 5 and we had a rather nasty dose of covid in late July
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Its easy to say “the state is too big”. Its far harder to identify what it should stop spending on.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Its easy to say “the state is too big”. Its far harder to identify what it should stop spending on.
Economically it's quite easy - well off pensioners. Politically that's tricky though.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Its easy to say “the state is too big”. Its far harder to identify what it should stop spending on.
Which brings us neatly to the first task of the Sunak government.
Another day of almost 500 troops losses for Russia according to Ukraine. I know this is propaganda but if anywhere close to these figures then how is it sustainable? Their mobilised men are being rapidly destroyed as cannon fodder.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies." Alexander Pope
Aren't we up to the destruction of the 10,000th tank by now according to Ukranian sources ?
No. The number is somewhere between the independently verified Orxy number of 1,420 (who acknowledge they are not complete) and the Ukraine claim of 2,628. Say 1,800 as a reasonable base case.
That Russia is reduced to trundling out its museum pieces from the 1960's suggests Russia isn't exactly overstocked with T-80s and T-90s.
That they've recently started using T-72s from Belarusian stores suggests that they might be reaching the limit of the T-62s that they can bring back into service.
Iran had some T-72s. Might be the next thing Russia buys from them.
It would be a major diplomatic victory if we could persuade Iran not to provide arms supplies to Russia.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
Bit spiky there Bart, and self-contradictory. If houses aren't investments what does "every investor" have to do with it? And bollocks anyway. Most stock portfolios are not intially leveraged 90%, or indeed at all. Negative equity will harm a lot more poor people who just wanted somewhere to live, than rich ones. Not to say it shouldn't happen, but them's the facts.
Disclaimer: I live in a paid for, 2 bedroom house, and I don't give a fuck what it is worth.
If people leverage themselves to make investments, then its their own damned fault if their investment loses money.
If someone is paying for their home as an expense, to live in, and not as an investment then it doesn't matter as much to them if house prices go down. Their mortgage is paying for the roof above their head, just as it would be if they were renting and it was dead money anyway.
By "investors" I mean those rent-seeking who are investing in property to make a return on investment, and not paying for a property as they need somewhere to live. Any investment can go down as well as up.
What are your proposals for the likes of Grainger plc, who own 10k rental properties for investment, Lloyds Banking Group, who are seeking to create a £4bn portfolio, Legal & General, property investment trusts, and pension funds - all of who are moving at pace into the 'residential property for investment' sector?
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
I'm well aware that I have no equity as a result of paying my landlords mortgage for the last seven years.
The point of my question was that it is very easy to wish negative equity on other people, and I wondered to what extent you would accept it for yourself.
Generally speaking a crash in prices would result in a disordered market and is best avoided. Also, if nothing is done about the fundamental incentives to invest in property rather than other assets, all a crash does is to prepare the stage for another boom. Normal people will get burned on the way down and on the way up.
I'm of like mind when it comes to a home being a home and not an investment, but you make that change by modifying the long-term investment incentives, not by willing on the damage of a short-term house price crash that would ultimately change nothing.
The objective is stable house prices. Neither a boom nor a crash.
Post bubble bursting stability would absolutely be ideal and the Bank of England should be given responsibility to take house prices into account as inflation when it determines interest rates in the future. Indeed given the direct link between interest rates and house prices is far greater than between CPI and interest rates, there'd be a good argument to be made that replacing CPI of 2% with house price stability as the Bank's mandate would make far more sense. But only post bubble bursting.
At first glance that looks like a fantastic suggestion.
I think the bubble could be helped to deflate by removal of the many government policies which drive house prices forever upwards, aimed at creating an orderly market.
I'm still a fan of a Swiss style low rate but progressive asset taxes on house value for nearly everyone. Plus replacing Council Tax with something similar, and probably abolishing Stamp Duty Land Tax. The latter two are encompassed in the Proportional Property Tax proposals.
Interest rates returning to normal will help, anyway.
It is borderline insane because it ignores other house price drivers (pop increase, lack of housebuilding). It would completely fuck the working young with permanent high interest rates on mortgages, and benefit the paid-off elderly who would trade off lower but still there house price inflation (which they can't spend) for higher interest on their bonds (which they can).
Braverman's implosion was arguably the event that finished Truss's premership. Makes one wonder if somehow that was a Sunak stitch up too - hence the reward.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
And actually, even if Braverman wasn't stupid, it is very easy to select the wrong email when you have multiple accounts.
It's why, for example, I have separate sign-ins for work and home stuff and use different browsers within those accounts for anything that I want to keep apart.
However, since anyone with a brain wouldn't be using a personal phone for such sensitive stuff she doesn't get away with that.
Me too. Separate email accounts, accessed via different browsers. Firefox for business; Chrome for mates. And in the dim and distant past when I had a job, separate phones too (iphone vs android vs dumb, and separate laptops. There should not be any excuse but with employers not providing free kit or proper guidelines, you can see how things get mixed up and messed up.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
Bit spiky there Bart, and self-contradictory. If houses aren't investments what does "every investor" have to do with it? And bollocks anyway. Most stock portfolios are not intially leveraged 90%, or indeed at all. Negative equity will harm a lot more poor people who just wanted somewhere to live, than rich ones. Not to say it shouldn't happen, but them's the facts.
Disclaimer: I live in a paid for, 2 bedroom house, and I don't give a fuck what it is worth.
If people leverage themselves to make investments, then its their own damned fault if their investment loses money.
If someone is paying for their home as an expense, to live in, and not as an investment then it doesn't matter as much to them if house prices go down. Their mortgage is paying for the roof above their head, just as it would be if they were renting and it was dead money anyway.
By "investors" I mean those rent-seeking who are investing in property to make a return on investment, and not paying for a property as they need somewhere to live. Any investment can go down as well as up.
What are your proposals for the likes of Grainger plc, who own 10k rental properties for investment, Lloyds Banking Group, who are seeking to create a £4bn portfolio, Legal & General, property investment trusts, and pension funds - all of who are moving at pace into the 'residential property for investment' sector?
Presumably all are "rent-seekers" in your view.
Isn't the whole purpose of being a landlord "rent seeking"?
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Its easy to say “the state is too big”. Its far harder to identify what it should stop spending on.
Not really.
I would scrap the automatic state pension and have it as a safety net just like other benefits. We should not be paying state pension to those who already have reasonable private pension provision or savings. I would increase the minimum wage to make it a proper living wage paid by employers so that the taxpayer is not subsidising companies who choose to pay their employees less than they need to live on. Associated with the above I would look at scrapping all benefits for anyone earning more than the average income.
That is just for starters. There are plenty more areas to look at.
Braverman's implosion was arguably the event that finished Truss's premership. Makes one wonder if somehow that was a Sunak stitch up too - hence the reward.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
And actually, even if Braverman wasn't stupid, it is very easy to select the wrong email when you have multiple accounts.
It's why, for example, I have separate sign-ins for work and home stuff and use different browsers within those accounts for anything that I want to keep apart.
However, since anyone with a brain wouldn't be using a personal phone for such sensitive stuff she doesn't get away with that.
Me too. Separate email accounts, accessed via different browsers. Firefox for business; Chrome for mates. And in the dim and distant past when I had a job, separate phones too (iphone vs android vs dumb, and separate laptops. There should not be any excuse but with employers not providing free kit or proper guidelines, you can see how things get mixed up and messed up.
When you are Home Secretary it's a bit different. Lots of sensitive, confidential stuff and a whole civil service to support you. Mistakes should be rare. And certainly should not be manipulated to score political points as Braverman did in her resignation last week.
First scandal brewing for Sunak then. Braverman. On day 1 he's in the position of having to defend the indefensible.
It's possible.
The lying about a leak of restricted documents - which clearly went well beyond the inadvertent error which she admitted to - didn't get a great deal of attention amid the Truss implosion. It would have been rapidly forgotten had she not been reappointed. As it is, it will become an exposed scab which the opposition will pick at.
Which he'll know. So she's succeeded in becoming the leader of the tory hard right, it would appear. You still have to pander to them. Unfit for government imo as long as this remains the case.
Stepping back from the row on here about tax vs spend, isn't there a simple reality:
Inequality means that the high cost of living forces spending forces taxation. If we had less inequality then we would need less £££ for public services and less taxation.
There are millions of people who no matter how hard they work or how many hours they do only just get by - or don't even manage to do that. Work doesn't pay the bills due to a combination of low pay and high bills. So the state has to step in, subsiding the wages of the low paid and having to provide support services for all the things they can't afford to do.
So I have no problem at all cutting corporation tax, but the quid pro quo needed to be that big companies stop being twunt employers. Pay your people a good wage, invest in training and development and you can have a lower tax bill. That way pay goes up and the demand for expensive support services goes down.
We used to have this - it was capitalism. Business invested in its employees and in the local economy so that people were happy and productive. Now we have bankism where wages and rights are cut to the bone and people live in shitty communities, then the same companies / politicians complain about low productivity.
We could fix this. But the people syphoning all the cash out of the economy to drive the inequality that makes them rich own most of the politicians. So we don't.
Another day of almost 500 troops losses for Russia according to Ukraine. I know this is propaganda but if anywhere close to these figures then how is it sustainable? Their mobilised men are being rapidly destroyed as cannon fodder.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies." Alexander Pope
Aren't we up to the destruction of the 10,000th tank by now according to Ukranian sources ?
No. The number is somewhere between the independently verified Orxy number of 1,420 (who acknowledge they are not complete) and the Ukraine claim of 2,628. Say 1,800 as a reasonable base case.
That Russia is reduced to trundling out its museum pieces from the 1960's suggests Russia isn't exactly overstocked with T-80s and T-90s.
That they've recently started using T-72s from Belarusian stores suggests that they might be reaching the limit of the T-62s that they can bring back into service.
Iran had some T-72s. Might be the next thing Russia buys from them.
It would be a major diplomatic victory if we could persuade Iran not to provide arms supplies to Russia.
Either that, or Israel goes and destroys their production capability. They won't want waves of them launched from Gaza....
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
Bit spiky there Bart, and self-contradictory. If houses aren't investments what does "every investor" have to do with it? And bollocks anyway. Most stock portfolios are not intially leveraged 90%, or indeed at all. Negative equity will harm a lot more poor people who just wanted somewhere to live, than rich ones. Not to say it shouldn't happen, but them's the facts.
Disclaimer: I live in a paid for, 2 bedroom house, and I don't give a fuck what it is worth.
If people leverage themselves to make investments, then its their own damned fault if their investment loses money.
If someone is paying for their home as an expense, to live in, and not as an investment then it doesn't matter as much to them if house prices go down. Their mortgage is paying for the roof above their head, just as it would be if they were renting and it was dead money anyway.
By "investors" I mean those rent-seeking who are investing in property to make a return on investment, and not paying for a property as they need somewhere to live. Any investment can go down as well as up.
What are your proposals for the likes of Grainger plc, who own 10k rental properties for investment, Lloyds Banking Group, who are seeking to create a £4bn portfolio, Legal & General, property investment trusts, and pension funds - all of who are moving at pace into the 'residential property for investment' sector?
Presumably all are "rent-seekers" in your view.
Absolutely they are.
I would like to see them face the same fate as those who invested in Blockbuster, or Woolworths.
Investments can go down as well as up. Theirs should.
At least Woolworths and Blockbuster were attempting to provide a service, even if they were bad at it (or it was no longer required) and not just rent seeking.
Another day of almost 500 troops losses for Russia according to Ukraine. I know this is propaganda but if anywhere close to these figures then how is it sustainable? Their mobilised men are being rapidly destroyed as cannon fodder.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies." Alexander Pope
Aren't we up to the destruction of the 10,000th tank by now according to Ukranian sources ?
No. The number is somewhere between the independently verified Orxy number of 1,420 (who acknowledge they are not complete) and the Ukraine claim of 2,628. Say 1,800 as a reasonable base case.
That Russia is reduced to trundling out its museum pieces from the 1960's suggests Russia isn't exactly overstocked with T-80s and T-90s.
That they've recently started using T-72s from Belarusian stores suggests that they might be reaching the limit of the T-62s that they can bring back into service.
Iran had some T-72s. Might be the next thing Russia buys from them.
It would be a major diplomatic victory if we could persuade Iran not to provide arms supplies to Russia.
The picture of Medvedev in his Nazi leather trenchcoat was taken at a tank plant for T-72s. I think Ukraine are destroying them faster than they can be made.
The old tanks in "storage" where in very large numbers left in the open air for years. It surprises me that any of them were able to be made serviceable. Ukraine have, I believe, captured a lot of T-62s with the speculation being that a lot of them barely worked and just broke down.
The objective is stable house prices. Neither a boom nor a crash.
That's a noble objective, but experience shows that when you aim for stability, you often create even bigger problems. Gordon Brown came into vowing not to let house prices get out of control and then proceeded to oversee the inflation of the major part of the bubble we are still living with.
You aim for stability but accept that you might miss.
So you put the right incentives in place to avoid a speculative bubble and you do this gradually, in the hope that the transition will be gradual and your avoid a crash, but you don't avoid a crash at all costs.
I think there's a middle ground between avoiding a crash at all costs and willing one on as an end in itself.
Perhaps a crash in house prices is unavoidable as a transition to a saner housing market, but that doesn't mean that causing a house price crash gets you to a saner housing market. We've had house price crashes before and the housing market was still insane afterwards.
We need more extensive reform than simply using the blunt force trauma of the Bank of England base rate to control house prices.
First scandal brewing for Sunak then. Braverman. On day 1 he's in the position of having to defend the indefensible.
It's possible.
The lying about a leak of restricted documents - which clearly went well beyond the inadvertent error which she admitted to - didn't get a great deal of attention amid the Truss implosion. It would have been rapidly forgotten had she not been reappointed. As it is, it will become an exposed scab which the opposition will pick at.
Which he'll know. So she's succeeded in becoming the leader of the tory hard right, it would appear. You still have to pander to them. Unfit for government imo as long as this remains the case.
Indeed. What worries me is that she appears to be in a more powerful strategic position in the party than Patel was, but is also proposing even more dangerous legislation than Patel. The electronic tagging proposal really could affect anybody, once the definition of "disruptive" protest is widened to noisy, as per the earlier legislation in the year.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
Bit spiky there Bart, and self-contradictory. If houses aren't investments what does "every investor" have to do with it? And bollocks anyway. Most stock portfolios are not intially leveraged 90%, or indeed at all. Negative equity will harm a lot more poor people who just wanted somewhere to live, than rich ones. Not to say it shouldn't happen, but them's the facts.
Disclaimer: I live in a paid for, 2 bedroom house, and I don't give a fuck what it is worth.
If people leverage themselves to make investments, then its their own damned fault if their investment loses money.
If someone is paying for their home as an expense, to live in, and not as an investment then it doesn't matter as much to them if house prices go down. Their mortgage is paying for the roof above their head, just as it would be if they were renting and it was dead money anyway.
By "investors" I mean those rent-seeking who are investing in property to make a return on investment, and not paying for a property as they need somewhere to live. Any investment can go down as well as up.
What are your proposals for the likes of Grainger plc, who own 10k rental properties for investment, Lloyds Banking Group, who are seeking to create a £4bn portfolio, Legal & General, property investment trusts, and pension funds - all of who are moving at pace into the 'residential property for investment' sector?
Presumably all are "rent-seekers" in your view.
Bart's wish to crash housing is surely mad , but I think that's the definition of rent seeking ?
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
The way though to restore the house price/wage ratio is for incomes to rise. Ideally by genuine productivity rather than just wage inflation.
There would also need to be the same 3x income plus 1x spousal income ratio applied by lenders.
If you are relying solely on incomes rising that is going to take quite some time isn't it? A reduction in house prices of 10-20% over a few years would not be disastrous.
The objective is stable house prices. Neither a boom nor a crash.
That's a noble objective, but experience shows that when you aim for stability, you often create even bigger problems. Gordon Brown came into vowing not to let house prices get out of control and then proceeded to oversee the inflation of the major part of the bubble we are still living with.
You aim for stability but accept that you might miss.
So you put the right incentives in place to avoid a speculative bubble and you do this gradually, in the hope that the transition will be gradual and your avoid a crash, but you don't avoid a crash at all costs.
I think there's a middle ground between avoiding a crash at all costs and willing one on as an end in itself.
Perhaps a crash in house prices is unavoidable as a transition to a saner housing market, but that doesn't mean that causing a house price crash gets you to a saner housing market. We've had house price crashes before and the housing market was still insane afterwards.
We need more extensive reform than simply using the blunt force trauma of the Bank of England base rate to control house prices.
I don't want a crash as an end in itself.
I want stable, affordable house prices, at an affordable price/earnings ratio.
Unfortunately, since we are Peak Bubble, to get from here to where we should be will take a crash. A crash is not desirable for its own sake, but as an unpleasant but necessary medicine to get us to where we should be.
Another day of almost 500 troops losses for Russia according to Ukraine. I know this is propaganda but if anywhere close to these figures then how is it sustainable? Their mobilised men are being rapidly destroyed as cannon fodder.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies." Alexander Pope
Russia doesn’t have infinite reserves, either. Yes, they have millions of “reservists” - but the proportion of those who are fit and usable is much smaller.
The training being shown on Pro Russian channels is somewhere between horrifying and ridiculous.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Everyone can make generalisations on the lines of "Taxes are too high" and everyone can make generalisations, and an infinity of specifics, about how we need to spend more on X, Y and Z.
Just as those who want more spending need in reality to identify where this is to come from, along with all the other demands, so the 'Taxes are too high' people have to say which big and very big items of expenditure are going to the eliminated and how to respond to the demands for increases.
The small group of people who have to think about both sides of the equation, and can't get out of it by just having a single issue focus, are needing all the help they can get.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
Wow. This is quite something. A Russian soldier says it is perfectly normal to punish their comrades who have let the side down by forcing them to perform a sexual act on another. Apparently it is not gay in the slightest unlike those men who hold hands walking down the street waving rainbow flags who deserve to be beaten. There are an awful lot of Russian soldiers who are in the closet! (To be fair they don't have much other option)
TW: sexual violence
russian soldier is trying to justify rape and sexual violence as a legitimate and very normal way of punishment in the ru army.
according to him, it’s still not as horrible as a consensual gay sex and “rainbow flags”.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Everyone can make generalisations on the lines of "Taxes are too high" and everyone can make generalisations, and an infinity of specifics, about how we need to spend more on X, Y and Z.
Just as those who want more spending need in reality to identify where this is to come from, along with all the other demands, so the 'Taxes are too high' people have to say which big and very big items of expenditure are going to the eliminated and how to respond to the demands for increases.
The small group of people who have to think about both sides of the equation, and can't get out of it by just having a single issue focus, are needing all the help they can get.
I have covered that - or started to - in my reply below.
So if Sir Keir asks about it at PMQs, Sunak just blocks it with "we have an urgent question on that in a few minutes"? And then the UQ doesn't get seen by the general public?
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
So if Sir Keir asks about it at PMQs, Sunak just blocks it with "we have an urgent question on that in a few minutes"? And then the UQ doesn't get seen by the general public?
Starmer gets to ask questions with more relevance to the public - Labour get to use the UQ to probe at divisions within the Tories and to discredit Sunak in the eyes of lobby journalists. It's the perfect division of labour.
Stepping back from the row on here about tax vs spend, isn't there a simple reality:
Inequality means that the high cost of living forces spending forces taxation. If we had less inequality then we would need less £££ for public services and less taxation.
There are millions of people who no matter how hard they work or how many hours they do only just get by - or don't even manage to do that. Work doesn't pay the bills due to a combination of low pay and high bills. So the state has to step in, subsiding the wages of the low paid and having to provide support services for all the things they can't afford to do.
So I have no problem at all cutting corporation tax, but the quid pro quo needed to be that big companies stop being twunt employers. Pay your people a good wage, invest in training and development and you can have a lower tax bill. That way pay goes up and the demand for expensive support services goes down.
We used to have this - it was capitalism. Business invested in its employees and in the local economy so that people were happy and productive. Now we have bankism where wages and rights are cut to the bone and people live in shitty communities, then the same companies / politicians complain about low productivity.
We could fix this. But the people syphoning all the cash out of the economy to drive the inequality that makes them rich own most of the politicians. So we don't.
Very good indeed. Agree entirely.
I refer you to the income v. productivity chart from the ONS I published below. If policy helped equalize that, we'd be somewhere along the line. And you are right - regulated capitalism v. barely regulated bankism is at the heart of the problem. But I don't think people know what regulated capitalism is any more.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Its easy to say “the state is too big”. Its far harder to identify what it should stop spending on.
Not really.
I would scrap the automatic state pension and have it as a safety net just like other benefits. We should not be paying state pension to those who already have reasonable private pension provision or savings. I would increase the minimum wage to make it a proper living wage paid by employers so that the taxpayer is not subsidising companies who choose to pay their employees less than they need to live on. Associated with the above I would look at scrapping all benefits for anyone earning more than the average income.
That is just for starters. There are plenty more areas to look at.
Nice examples. These three alone would exhaust the political capital of any party in this country, and probably in the whole of western Europe.
And by the way to implement radical pension changes would take decades in a world where people have already spent their working lives calculating on assumptions based on present provision. (The state pension for a couple is about £19,000 and rising. It is a very serious bit of the total calculation people make).
I think Anneliese Dodd's has clearly forgotten about Liz Truss, and the previous 2 female Tory PMs, already. Selectively forgetting the fact that Labour have never had anyone as a leader other than white, middle-aged men.
Just one in five of the ministers around Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet table are women.
I know the Conservatives struggle to add up, but women make up half the population.
True but otoh this is also an unforced error by Rishi, especially as he set out to balance his Cabinet across different factions. I expect reshuffles will have addressed this by the next general election.
Another day of almost 500 troops losses for Russia according to Ukraine. I know this is propaganda but if anywhere close to these figures then how is it sustainable? Their mobilised men are being rapidly destroyed as cannon fodder.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies." Alexander Pope
Aren't we up to the destruction of the 10,000th tank by now according to Ukranian sources ?
No. The number is somewhere between the independently verified Orxy number of 1,420 (who acknowledge they are not complete) and the Ukraine claim of 2,628. Say 1,800 as a reasonable base case.
That Russia is reduced to trundling out its museum pieces from the 1960's suggests Russia isn't exactly overstocked with T-80s and T-90s.
That they've recently started using T-72s from Belarusian stores suggests that they might be reaching the limit of the T-62s that they can bring back into service.
Iran had some T-72s. Might be the next thing Russia buys from them.
It would be a major diplomatic victory if we could persuade Iran not to provide arms supplies to Russia.
The picture of Medvedev in his Nazi leather trenchcoat was taken at a tank plant for T-72s. I think Ukraine are destroying them faster than they can be made.
The old tanks in "storage" where in very large numbers left in the open air for years. It surprises me that any of them were able to be made serviceable. Ukraine have, I believe, captured a lot of T-62s with the speculation being that a lot of them barely worked and just broke down.
Herr Doktor Speer trench coat, please…
The plant in question does mostly rebuild, IIRC. Saw a video from wayback before the war - they strip the tanks back to the bare metal. Bit like one of those tank restoration things, but done as a production line. Sort off. The primitivity of the working conditions and equipment was an eye opener…
Things will only get worse for Sunak and the tories from here.
I'm afraid my goodwill evaporated yesterday on those dreadful Cabinet appointments. Braverman. Williamson. Seriously?
Yuck.
They need booting out of office for a lengthy time.
Not necessarily.
Given when the poll was sampled, it's got "yay, Truss has gone", but not "yay, Boris isn't coming back" or "yay, Sunak is going to be brilliant". So there's room for growth from here.
Having said that, "Boris isn't coming back" will disappoint some voters and there's an awfully big gap for Sunak's brilliance to close, even if he is better than his predecessors.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Its easy to say “the state is too big”. Its far harder to identify what it should stop spending on.
Not really.
I would scrap the automatic state pension and have it as a safety net just like other benefits. We should not be paying state pension to those who already have reasonable private pension provision or savings. I would increase the minimum wage to make it a proper living wage paid by employers so that the taxpayer is not subsidising companies who choose to pay their employees less than they need to live on. Associated with the above I would look at scrapping all benefits for anyone earning more than the average income.
That is just for starters. There are plenty more areas to look at.
Nice examples. These three alone would exhaust the political capital of any party in this country, and probably in the whole of western Europe.
And by the way to implement radical pension changes would take decades in a world where people have already spent their working lives calculating on assumptions based on present provision. (The state pension for a couple is about £19,000 and rising. It is a very serious bit of the total calculation people make).
Capitalise that, index linked as it is, assuming a 3% withdrawal and it's worth £1m odd.
"He owns two £2m homes in London, one of which is a £2.5m townhouse less than a mile from the Houses of Parliament. He also owns Eye Manor, a Grade I listed building in Herefordshire which he purchased for £1.1 million in 2009. His constituency of Newark is 150 miles (240 km) from his 'family home' in Herefordshire. He rents a £2,000-a-month property in his Newark constituency,[26] which is paid for by the MPs' second homes allowance."
What is your point? Didn't Tony Blair have a number of properties whilst PM? What housing and land holdings does Starmer have at the moment and in the past?
It was Jenrick who caused minor amusement during the first Covid lockdown by making a run for what was not his first, nor his second, home, but his third.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
Labour planning to scrap tax-breaks for private schools. Unfortunate tactical rather than strategic thinking. What happens when those who can no longer afford private schools send them to local schools instead?
The Conservatives crashed the economy and now threaten to make deep cuts to school budgets.
What happens is that with more rich middle class people using them they get more funding.
This is the sort of fallacious nonsense - that pushy middle class parents automatically lead to much better state schools - that is truly believed on the Left, isn't it?
It's your equivalent of the dogmatic faith in grammar schools being the answer to all education problems on the right.
Have Labour yet demonstrated that it will be a net positive once they have paid the extra costs to educate children forced out of the independent sector into state schools?
I'd suggest that the policy is crude populism, which will undermine educational opportunities for many who don't fit the relatively boilerplate state model.
Nor am I convinced by the "The Conservatives crashed the economy" line. That doesn't stand up very well when we start making international comparisons with our peers. But it's not clear that anyone will be listening.
Yep, and it won't. What it will do is drive up house prices near very good state schools and create a new micro industry of private tutoring.
It will absolutely nothing for improving educational outcomes or increasing the tax take. It will also lead to reduced employment in the education sector.
Where I live, the new fashion among the moderately rich is sending your children to the Free School, for sixth form.
Private school has, by then, taught them how to learn. The school and teachers are reasonable. Topped up with £10k a year of tuition, of course.
So when they go for interviews for uni, they can blag up being state educated. The school gets ever higher A level results….
The families can afford much nicer ski holidays with the money saved.
What’s not to like?
Teachers, incidentally, are making a fortune in the tuition thing.
Labour planning to scrap tax-breaks for private schools. Unfortunate tactical rather than strategic thinking. What happens when those who can no longer afford private schools send them to local schools instead?
The Conservatives crashed the economy and now threaten to make deep cuts to school budgets.
What happens is that with more rich middle class people using them they get more funding.
This is the sort of fallacious nonsense - that pushy middle class parents automatically lead to much better state schools - that is truly believed on the Left, isn't it?
It's your equivalent of the dogmatic faith in grammar schools being the answer to all education problems on the right.
Have Labour yet demonstrated that it will be a net positive once they have paid the extra costs to educate children forced out of the independent sector into state schools?
I'd suggest that the policy is crude populism, which will undermine educational opportunities for many who don't fit the relatively boilerplate state model.
Nor am I convinced by the "The Conservatives crashed the economy" line. That doesn't stand up very well when we start making international comparisons with our peers. But it's not clear that anyone will be listening.
Yep, and it won't. What it will do is drive up house prices near very good state schools and create a new micro industry of private tutoring.
It will absolutely nothing for improving educational outcomes or increasing the tax take. It will also lead to reduced employment in the education sector.
Where I live, the new fashion among the moderately rich is sending your children to the Free School, for sixth form.
Private school has, by then, taught them how to learn. The school and teachers are reasonable. Topped up with £10k a year of tuition, of course.
So when they go for interviews for uni, they can blag up being state educated. The school gets ever higher A level results….
The families can afford much nicer ski holidays with the money saved.
What’s not to like?
Teachers, incidentally, are making a fortune in the tuition thing.
This is not new. My A level politics class at Godalming Sixth Form College was full of rich boys who had been at the RGS in Guildford.
'Are you happy Suella Braverman is back as Home Secretary?'
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says Suella Braverman has been "fully accountable" for her mistakes and insists that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has put together a "cabinet of all talents"
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Its easy to say “the state is too big”. Its far harder to identify what it should stop spending on.
Not really.
I would scrap the automatic state pension and have it as a safety net just like other benefits. We should not be paying state pension to those who already have reasonable private pension provision or savings. I would increase the minimum wage to make it a proper living wage paid by employers so that the taxpayer is not subsidising companies who choose to pay their employees less than they need to live on. Associated with the above I would look at scrapping all benefits for anyone earning more than the average income.
That is just for starters. There are plenty more areas to look at.
The best way to scrap the automatic state pension is to roll it into a UBI tax and benefit reform. What Milton Friedman advocated for as a 'negative income tax'. Then you can say people are still getting it (indeed everyone is now as part of the UBI) but those who work are better off and you could abolish the DWP.
A UBI and a simple, flat tax rate, would effectively abolish state pensions for the high earning retired but it'd be via taxing their earnings so they won't be able to claim they've lost that which they mistaken believe they've 'paid for'.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
Are there great swathes of the country where there's no building at all going on ?
Certainly not in Southern Hampshire, its been a building site for 10 years and will continue to be one for another 10
In east Berkshire where I grew up the house building is absolutely massive. Where I live now in Buckinghamshire there is quite a lot of building in villages but it is dwarfed by the huge new estates popping up around towns like Aylesbury.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s and 1990s I only remember the occasional small new development. House building just seemed to explode in the mid-noughties. There is no doubt in my mind that was driven by the massive increase in immigration.
I'll still make my point again that it is far better to find locations to build new communities designed in a sympathetic manner rather than destroying existing ones by making them far larger than was ever intended.
So if Sir Keir asks about it at PMQs, Sunak just blocks it with "we have an urgent question on that in a few minutes"? And then the UQ doesn't get seen by the general public?
Starmer gets to ask questions with more relevance to the public - Labour get to use the UQ to probe at divisions within the Tories and to discredit Sunak in the eyes of lobby journalists. It's the perfect division of labour.
I'll be surprised if Starmer focuses mainly on Braverman at the first PMQs. It's the ground Sunak would want to fight on - ie. his choice to bring back a minister who is tough (in words if not deeds) on immigration. A more productive set of questions, taking the opportunity to define Sunak would be: 1. To bang on about Sunak trashing the levelling up agenda at the Tunbridge Wells Tories' garden party. 2. To tackle the claim that the economic mess is all Truss and Kwarteng's fault and nothing to do with me guvnor. i.e. make the case that markets wouldn't have been so easily spooked and mortgage rates wouldn't be rising so quickly if Sunak had left a sounder foundation after 2.5 years as Chancellor.
Another day of almost 500 troops losses for Russia according to Ukraine. I know this is propaganda but if anywhere close to these figures then how is it sustainable? Their mobilised men are being rapidly destroyed as cannon fodder.
"Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies." Alexander Pope
Russia doesn’t have infinite reserves, either. Yes, they have millions of “reservists” - but the proportion of those who are fit and usable is much smaller.
The training being shown on Pro Russian channels is somewhere between horrifying and ridiculous.
There’s reason to believe that the KIA claimed by Ukraine are a pretty good estimate. Leaks of data from Russia on benefits payouts, some corroboration from Western intelligience etc…
The tank numbers look pretty good too, which adds credence to the troop numbers. Internet sleuthes Oryx have visual confirmation worth 55% of the Ukrainian claim. Fog of war for them and fog of war for the Ukrainians, split the difference and you still get to just over 2,000 tanks. Planes and choppers probably overstated from the early days where the propaganda war was existential for Kiev.
So if Sir Keir asks about it at PMQs, Sunak just blocks it with "we have an urgent question on that in a few minutes"? And then the UQ doesn't get seen by the general public?
Starmer gets to ask questions with more relevance to the public - Labour get to use the UQ to probe at divisions within the Tories and to discredit Sunak in the eyes of lobby journalists. It's the perfect division of labour.
I'll be surprised if Starmer focuses mainly on Braverman at the first PMQs. It's the ground Sunak would want to fight on - ie. his choice to bring back a minister who is tough (in words if not deeds) on immigration. A more productive set of questions, taking the opportunity to define Sunak would be: 1. To bang on about Sunak trashing the levelling up agenda at the Tunbridge Wells Tories' garden party. 2. To tackle the claim that the economic mess is all Truss and Kwarteng's fault and nothing to do with me guvnor. i.e. make the case that markets wouldn't have been so easily spooked and mortgage rates wouldn't be rising so quickly if Sunak had left a sounder foundation after 2.5 years as Chancellor.
Ah, so your advice is that Sir Keir lie through his teeth?
I've very reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was either Braverman as HS or risking Johnson back as PM.
Those were probably the political choices.
I think Sunak probably expects Braverman to self-immolate at some point whereupon she will be replaced.
Frankly, I'd like Gove in slot as I think he'd sort the boats, and the department, inside 6 months.
I wonder when you were laying into Truss, whether you thought you'd be making lame excuses for Sunak a day into his premiership. Oh well.
You seem to see me as some sort of "traitor" to Adam Smith/Hayek who's sold-out to a high-tax high-spending globalist consensus.
Nah. I am a right-wing Conservative who recognised Truss and her tin-ear as an absolute disaster for our party.
She tried to launch a 1988 budget in the conditions of 1979, and as if deficits didn't matter. She was dogmatic and naïve. She was obstinate. She was foolish. And she seems unrepentant too. That doesn't make me some sort of wet you need to dry out. It makes me realistic - she's probably shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs now.
She was nothing like Thatcher who was a consummate politician and both Thatcher, and Nigel Lawson, would agree with that.
If Truss has 'shat the bed for low tax for 20 yrs' then I'm actually glad. I just cannot see a sane way where 'low tax' is a practical and sustainable way forward for the UK. Austerity is fine; but you can only apply it so far before the system breaks. Growth cannot be commanded; only encouraged.
I see taxes as needing to rise a little. But I want any increased taxes to be spent *very* carefully. Yes, I know...
I think you can lower taxes once the deficit is under control, and a higher growth rate has been achieved.
This is the "sharing the proceeds of growth" approach that Cameron outlined in 2010.
I think working people are overtaxed, NI is too high and a tax on jobs, income tax thresholds need to start rising with earnings again, the 40p rate kicks-in too low, and the 100-120k tax trap zone is a mess causing all sorts of knock-on implications.
I would like to see all of that addressed.
"I think working people are overtaxed"
Yes and no, IMO. Workers on low pay are certainly overtaxed; workers with high pay are probably not paying enough tax. That's the problem with the word 'workers': it covers the guy who I bought a can of Red Bull from at Asda at five this morning, and the chap earning high six figures.
But in general, I think the total tax take in the country needs to increase. Who pays more, and how that money is spent, is where the issues become really difficult.
Income is overtaxed and capital is undertaxed.
There is an emerging consensus on this.
I'm not sure about this - "capital has already been taxed" is the common refrain.
But it has not been taxed enough
Everything is taxed too much. Yes there is a need to adjust where taxes are levied from but at the same time the overall tax burden is far too high. Truss was catastrophically wrong in the way she went about things but the underlying basic principle that the state is too large and we pay too much of overall in tax is absolutely right.
Its easy to say “the state is too big”. Its far harder to identify what it should stop spending on.
Not really.
I would scrap the automatic state pension and have it as a safety net just like other benefits. We should not be paying state pension to those who already have reasonable private pension provision or savings. I would increase the minimum wage to make it a proper living wage paid by employers so that the taxpayer is not subsidising companies who choose to pay their employees less than they need to live on. Associated with the above I would look at scrapping all benefits for anyone earning more than the average income.
That is just for starters. There are plenty more areas to look at.
The best way to scrap the automatic state pension is to roll it into a UBI tax and benefit reform. What Milton Friedman advocated for as a 'negative income tax'. Then you can say people are still getting it (indeed everyone is now as part of the UBI) but those who work are better off and you could abolish the DWP.
A UBI and a simple, flat tax rate, would effectively abolish state pensions for the high earning retired but it'd be via taxing their earnings so they won't be able to claim they've lost that which they mistaken believe they've 'paid for'.
Generally I'm a fan of universal entitlements rather than means-tested ones. People don't resent being taxed to pay for benefits which apply to all.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
Things will only get worse for Sunak and the tories from here.
I'm afraid my goodwill evaporated yesterday on those dreadful Cabinet appointments. Braverman. Williamson. Seriously?
Yuck.
They need booting out of office for a lengthy time.
Not necessarily.
Given when the poll was sampled, it's got "yay, Truss has gone", but not "yay, Boris isn't coming back" or "yay, Sunak is going to be brilliant". So there's room for growth from here.
Having said that, "Boris isn't coming back" will disappoint some voters and there's an awfully big gap for Sunak's brilliance to close, even if he is better than his predecessors.
It'll just gradually get worse after a short term bounce.
The mess that's led to the end of cheap mortgages will only register when yours comes to an end. Many will feel that pain in 2023, more in 2024. Drip, drip, drip....
If they're very lucky, the war will have eased an energy bills being paid won't be any higher in April 2023 than they are now. But that's the best case.
And meanwhile, who's up for another round of austerity folks?
Numbers either don't add up. Or. The political choices necessary to make them add up don't. Fundamentals haven't changed no matter who sits in the big chair.
Numbers either don't add up. Or. The political choices necessary to make them add up don't. Fundamentals haven't changed no matter who sits in the big chair.
When was it supposed to be, before the markets panicked and forced it to be brought forward?
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
Things will only get worse for Sunak and the tories from here.
I'm afraid my goodwill evaporated yesterday on those dreadful Cabinet appointments. Braverman. Williamson. Seriously?
Yuck.
They need booting out of office for a lengthy time.
Not necessarily.
Given when the poll was sampled, it's got "yay, Truss has gone", but not "yay, Boris isn't coming back" or "yay, Sunak is going to be brilliant". So there's room for growth from here.
Having said that, "Boris isn't coming back" will disappoint some voters and there's an awfully big gap for Sunak's brilliance to close, even if he is better than his predecessors.
It'll just gradually get worse after a short term bounce.
The mess that's led to the end of cheap mortgages will only register when yours comes to an end. Many will feel that pain in 2023, more in 2024. Drip, drip, drip....
If they're very lucky, the war will have eased an energy bills being paid won't be any higher in April 2023 than they are now. But that's the best case.
And meanwhile, who's up for another round of austerity folks?
I think its entirely likely that energy bills will have fallen dramatically by April 2023
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
Are there great swathes of the country where there's no building at all going on ?
London's green belt; Lake District (though plenty is much of Cumbria); almost the whole of the landmass of Scotland; Hampstead Heath.
Lake District and much of Scotland has low demand for housing.
Are we saying the current "housing crisis" be solved at the cost of London green belt
Yes.
That's where people need or want to live. People don't need or want to live in Scotland. Why should a young adult living in London who wants to move out of their parents home be told the only option is to move to Dumferline?
There should be green patches, like parks, reserved, but no need for an entire belt.
Numbers either don't add up. Or. The political choices necessary to make them add up don't. Fundamentals haven't changed no matter who sits in the big chair.
When was it supposed to be, before the markets panicked and forced it to be brought forward?
23 November. It is a very movable feast though. I can count at least 4 dates given.
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
Are there great swathes of the country where there's no building at all going on ?
Certainly not in Southern Hampshire, its been a building site for 10 years and will continue to be one for another 10
In east Berkshire where I grew up the house building is absolutely massive. Where I live now in Buckinghamshire there is quite a lot of building in villages but it is dwarfed by the huge new estates popping up around towns like Aylesbury.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s and 1990s I only remember the occasional small new development. House building just seemed to explode in the mid-noughties. There is no doubt in my mind that was driven by the massive increase in immigration.
I'll still make my point again that it is far better to find locations to build new communities designed in a sympathetic manner rather than destroying existing ones by making them far larger than was ever intended.
Organic growth of communities is EVUL, remember.
The joke is that NIMBYism is driven by the GiantEstateOfExecutiveShitboxes crap. If someone said they wanted to build another street of houses in the local vernacular on the edge of the village, you’d get much less resistance.
Suella Braverman, a new theory. Suella is of Mauritian heritage, where they speak French. Suella spent two years at the Sorbonne, where they speak French. The Home Secretary will need to negotiate new Channel crossings procedures with France, where they speak French.
Or (another new theory) Braverman was reappointed to assuage the headbangers, knowing she'd be forced out within a week. Is Rishi that Machiavellian?
Numbers either don't add up. Or. The political choices necessary to make them add up don't. Fundamentals haven't changed no matter who sits in the big chair.
The cabinet snakes in the grass turned out not to be adders?
American house prices are forecast to have a significant fall next year. Hopefully the same, but to an even greater extent, happens in this country too.
And don't bother responding bemoaning "negative equity". Negative equity is something every investor is supposed to potentially face in a rational market as prices go up or down in response to market conditions not ratchet only ever one way, and housing should primarily be somewhere to live not "equity" anyway.
How far would you like to see house prices fall, and what equity would that leave your with in your house, as a percentage?
Ideally I would like to see house price to income ratios returned to a 3x level they were at, at the turn of the century. So at least a 50% to 60% fall in house prices would be ideal, though if wages go up then that could be mitigated against.
I don't just care about myself, I think you'll find a lot of people have zero equity in their home and are paying rent to an "investor" instead. If everyone had no equity in their home, then that wouldn't be a problem, a home is somewhere to live, an expense, not supposed to be equity. Someone paying rent doesn't get equity for doing so - and if investors in homes get burnt, then that's something that can happen to investors in any market.
The histrionics over negative equity is beyond a joke, that is ratchetting rent from younger generations to the well off by putting housing ever further out of their reach. Imagine if any other market worked that way. If stock prices only ever rose and never fell, would that be healthy?
At the end of 1999 the FTSE 100 was 6930 and the average house price in England was £75k Today the FTSE 100 is 6996 and according to the ONS the average house price reached £292k in July.
In 23 years the FTSE has gone up by less than 1%, while house prices have more than tripled. Is that healthy?
FTSE is surely good value ?
The lack of growth is quite amazing, yes.
If you have a population growing faster than house building, the only surprise is that people are surprised by increasing prices.
Are there great swathes of the country where there's no building at all going on ?
Certainly not in Southern Hampshire, its been a building site for 10 years and will continue to be one for another 10
In east Berkshire where I grew up the house building is absolutely massive. Where I live now in Buckinghamshire there is quite a lot of building in villages but it is dwarfed by the huge new estates popping up around towns like Aylesbury.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s and 1990s I only remember the occasional small new development. House building just seemed to explode in the mid-noughties. There is no doubt in my mind that was driven by the massive increase in immigration.
I'll still make my point again that it is far better to find locations to build new communities designed in a sympathetic manner rather than destroying existing ones by making them far larger than was ever intended.
Organic growth of communities is EVUL, remember.
The joke is that NIMBYism is driven by the GiantEstateOfExecutiveShitboxes crap. If someone said they wanted to build another street of houses in the local vernacular on the edge of the village, you’d get much less resistance.
I don't buy that. I see no evidence of people demanding it be made easier to build streets at the edge of their village, build it elsewhere seems to be the demand made instead.
It doesn't matter much if its the local vernacular, or executive, or anything else, people will still object because it "ruins their view/is too crowded/has no services/roads are congested/affects my house price/newts live there" or whatever other crap they want to come up with.
Sunak had the option of putting Mordaunt in the home office, but chose to reanimate sacked Braverman. To me that says a lot about Sunak’s priorities and status within the Tory party. It does not bode well.
As the Yougov polling shows, Sunak already polls better than his party. However he also needs to keep the ERG and Redwall on board, hence the appointment of the tough on immigration Braverman as Home Secretary
Good morning
Braverman is a very controversial appointment which has angered opponents, but her appointment is a result of pure politics as her backing of Rishi after Johnson withdrew took the votes away from Mordaunt and to Rishi
However, this is the first morning I can honestly say I am relieved to see the end of the Johnson Truss toxic period and the wider picture is the cabinet is drawn from across the party and it is more united than it has been for a very long time
I would caution those predicting Rishi will have a very short honeymoon not to underestimate the change that has just happened and the effect Rishi is going to have on politics going forward and certainly labour now have a very different opponent
Braverman was never going to support Mordaunt - it was a case of whether she endorsed Johnson . She has shown herself to be a thoroughly malign figure who appears to take real pleasure from the additional pain and suffering she is able to bring to those already facing desperate circumstances. That Sunak proceeded to appoint her in the face of this evidence - and the very recent breach of the Ministerial Code - highlights where his true sympathies lie in the battle that risks the triumph of Evil over Human Decency.
Braverman's implosion was arguably the event that finished Truss's premership. Makes one wonder if somehow that was a Sunak stitch up too - hence the reward.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
And actually, even if Braverman wasn't stupid, it is very easy to select the wrong email when you have multiple accounts.
It's why, for example, I have separate sign-ins for work and home stuff and use different browsers within those accounts for anything that I want to keep apart.
However, since anyone with a brain wouldn't be using a personal phone for such sensitive stuff she doesn't get away with that.
Me too. Separate email accounts, accessed via different browsers. Firefox for business; Chrome for mates. And in the dim and distant past when I had a job, separate phones too (iphone vs android vs dumb, and separate laptops. There should not be any excuse but with employers not providing free kit or proper guidelines, you can see how things get mixed up and messed up.
When you are Home Secretary it's a bit different. Lots of sensitive, confidential stuff and a whole civil service to support you. Mistakes should be rare. And certainly should not be manipulated to score political points as Braverman did in her resignation last week.
Having worked there is the past, it should not be possible to access Home Office systems from private devices, or vice versa. So the likelihood is it was sent directly from an official email (and it was to an MP, which would be permitted) and fell foul of the 'need to know' principle.
Suella Braverman, a new theory. Suella is of Mauritian heritage, where they speak French. Suella spent two years at the Sorbonne, where they speak French. The Home Secretary will need to negotiate new Channel crossings procedures with France, where they speak French.
Or (another new theory) Braverman was reappointed to assuage the headbangers, knowing she'd be forced out within a week. Is Rishi that Machiavellian?
I mean, one can only hope there's some 4D Chess going on, because on the face of it, her appointment looks like an epic blunder of titanic proportions.
Numbers either don't add up. Or. The political choices necessary to make them add up don't. Fundamentals haven't changed no matter who sits in the big chair.
It's the right decision. Now they have reversed most of the Truss measures and limited the energy policy to 6 months it makes sense to take their time as the markets aren't panicking.
Comments
It will absolutely nothing for improving educational outcomes or increasing the tax take. It will also lead to reduced employment in the education sector.
Taxation never ends, because the state's expenditure never ends.
That Russia is reduced to trundling out its museum pieces from the 1960's suggests Russia isn't exactly overstocked with T-80s and T-90s.
I wouldn't say we all need to be under threat of wearing electronic tags just for having attended any noisy protest, as Braverman is staggeringly planning.
I remember how my wife told me, who's a commercial lawyer, that when we bought out our detached family home we paid over four times as much stamp duty as a multimillion pound business recently did for purchasing a large commercial property - a deal she worked on.
I think the bubble could be helped to deflate by removal of the many government policies which drive house prices forever upwards, aimed at creating an orderly market.
I'm still a fan of a Swiss style low rate but progressive asset taxes on house value for nearly everyone. Plus replacing Council Tax with something similar, and probably abolishing Stamp Duty Land Tax. The latter two are encompassed in the Proportional Property Tax proposals.
Interest rates returning to normal will help, anyway.
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1585192120457261056?t=-G_fzmJ3MQw-oGJMqzWWrg&s=19
But even independently verified is 2/3 of that.
The Bank could have house price stability at a target for interest rate decisions, not inflation excluding the one bit of inflation that's actually linked to interest rates.
Inflation never went away, it just went into housing instead of a homeowner's consumer goods, which those owning housing saw as a positive instead of a negative. Inflation in housing is not "better" than inflation in electricity bills.
It was more of a pain in the arm than the earlier vaccinations. Nothing else.
(Racists love the idea of not only wanting to remove unwanted immigrants but actually DREAMING about it)
Inequality means that the high cost of living forces spending forces taxation. If we had less inequality then we would need less £££ for public services and less taxation.
There are millions of people who no matter how hard they work or how many hours they do only just get by - or don't even manage to do that. Work doesn't pay the bills due to a combination of low pay and high bills. So the state has to step in, subsiding the wages of the low paid and having to provide support services for all the things they can't afford to do.
So I have no problem at all cutting corporation tax, but the quid pro quo needed to be that big companies stop being twunt employers. Pay your people a good wage, invest in training and development and you can have a lower tax bill. That way pay goes up and the demand for expensive support services goes down.
We used to have this - it was capitalism. Business invested in its employees and in the local economy so that people were happy and productive. Now we have bankism where wages and rights are cut to the bone and people live in shitty communities, then the same companies / politicians complain about low productivity.
We could fix this. But the people syphoning all the cash out of the economy to drive the inequality that makes them rich own most of the politicians. So we don't.
Politically that's tricky though.
Right up until the first four words.
Iran had some T-72s. Might be the next thing Russia buys from them.
It would be a major diplomatic victory if we could persuade Iran not to provide arms supplies to Russia.
What are your proposals for the likes of Grainger plc, who own 10k rental properties for investment, Lloyds Banking Group, who are seeking to create a £4bn portfolio, Legal & General, property investment trusts, and pension funds - all of who are moving at pace into the 'residential property for investment' sector?
Presumably all are "rent-seekers" in your view.
Bart for Chancellor!!
I would scrap the automatic state pension and have it as a safety net just like other benefits. We should not be paying state pension to those who already have reasonable private pension provision or savings.
I would increase the minimum wage to make it a proper living wage paid by employers so that the taxpayer is not subsidising companies who choose to pay their employees less than they need to live on.
Associated with the above I would look at scrapping all benefits for anyone earning more than the average income.
That is just for starters. There are plenty more areas to look at.
I would like to see them face the same fate as those who invested in Blockbuster, or Woolworths.
Investments can go down as well as up. Theirs should.
At least Woolworths and Blockbuster were attempting to provide a service, even if they were bad at it (or it was no longer required) and not just rent seeking.
The old tanks in "storage" where in very large numbers left in the open air for years. It surprises me that any of them were able to be made serviceable. Ukraine have, I believe, captured a lot of T-62s with the speculation being that a lot of them barely worked and just broke down.
So you put the right incentives in place to avoid a speculative bubble and you do this gradually, in the hope that the transition will be gradual and your avoid a crash, but you don't avoid a crash at all costs.
I think there's a middle ground between avoiding a crash at all costs and willing one on as an end in itself.
Perhaps a crash in house prices is unavoidable as a transition to a saner housing market, but that doesn't mean that causing a house price crash gets you to a saner housing market. We've had house price crashes before and the housing market was still insane afterwards.
We need more extensive reform than simply using the blunt force trauma of the Bank of England base rate to control house prices.
Things will only get worse for Sunak and the tories from here.
I'm afraid my goodwill evaporated yesterday on those dreadful Cabinet appointments. Braverman. Williamson. Seriously?
Yuck.
They need booting out of office for a lengthy time.
Sunak: weak, weak, weak.
I want stable, affordable house prices, at an affordable price/earnings ratio.
Unfortunately, since we are Peak Bubble, to get from here to where we should be will take a crash. A crash is not desirable for its own sake, but as an unpleasant but necessary medicine to get us to where we should be.
The training being shown on Pro Russian channels is somewhere between horrifying and ridiculous.
Just as those who want more spending need in reality to identify where this is to come from, along with all the other demands, so the 'Taxes are too high' people have to say which big and very big items of expenditure are going to the eliminated and how to respond to the demands for increases.
The small group of people who have to think about both sides of the equation, and can't get out of it by just having a single issue focus, are needing all the help they can get.
TW: sexual violence
russian soldier is trying to justify rape and sexual violence as a legitimate and very normal way of punishment in the ru army.
according to him, it’s still not as horrible as a consensual gay sex and “rainbow flags”.
it tells you a lot about that society.
https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1585209020339879936
Prime Minister @RishiSunak & Chancellor @Jeremy_Hunt have agreed the Autumn Statement will be delivered on 17 November with an @OBR_UK forecast. It will contain the UK’s medium term fiscal plan to put public spending on a sustainable footing, get debt falling & restore stability.
https://twitter.com/hmtreasury/status/1585211057114472453
Population of 3,000
Are there great swathes of the country where there's no building at all going on ?
And by the way to implement radical pension changes would take decades in a world where people have already spent their working lives calculating on assumptions based on present provision. (The state pension for a couple is about £19,000 and rising. It is a very serious bit of the total calculation people make).
The plant in question does mostly rebuild, IIRC. Saw a video from wayback before the war - they strip the tanks back to the bare metal. Bit like one of those tank restoration things, but done as a production line. Sort off. The primitivity of the working conditions and equipment was an eye opener…
Given when the poll was sampled, it's got "yay, Truss has gone", but not "yay, Boris isn't coming back" or "yay, Sunak is going to be brilliant". So there's room for growth from here.
Having said that, "Boris isn't coming back" will disappoint some voters and there's an awfully big gap for Sunak's brilliance to close, even if he is better than his predecessors.
Private school has, by then, taught them how to learn. The school and teachers are reasonable. Topped up with £10k a year of tuition, of course.
So when they go for interviews for uni, they can blag up being state educated. The school gets ever higher A level results….
The families can afford much nicer ski holidays with the money saved.
What’s not to like?
Teachers, incidentally, are making a fortune in the tuition thing.
'Are you happy Suella Braverman is back as Home Secretary?'
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says Suella Braverman has been "fully accountable" for her mistakes and insists that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has put together a "cabinet of all talents"
👉 https://trib.al/8esvqMd
📺 Sky 501 https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1585214870261317633/video/1
A UBI and a simple, flat tax rate, would effectively abolish state pensions for the high earning retired but it'd be via taxing their earnings so they won't be able to claim they've lost that which they mistaken believe they've 'paid for'.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s and 1990s I only remember the occasional small new development. House building just seemed to explode in the mid-noughties. There is no doubt in my mind that was driven by the massive increase in immigration.
I'll still make my point again that it is far better to find locations to build new communities designed in a sympathetic manner rather than destroying existing ones by making them far larger than was ever intended.
1. To bang on about Sunak trashing the levelling up agenda at the Tunbridge Wells Tories' garden party.
2. To tackle the claim that the economic mess is all Truss and Kwarteng's fault and nothing to do with me guvnor. i.e. make the case that markets wouldn't have been so easily spooked and mortgage rates wouldn't be rising so quickly if Sunak had left a sounder foundation after 2.5 years as Chancellor.
The tank numbers look pretty good too, which adds credence to the troop numbers. Internet sleuthes Oryx have visual confirmation worth 55% of the Ukrainian claim. Fog of war for them and fog of war for the Ukrainians, split the difference and you still get to just over 2,000 tanks. Planes and choppers probably overstated from the early days where the propaganda war was existential for Kiev.
Are we saying the current "housing crisis" be solved at the cost of London green belt
The mess that's led to the end of cheap mortgages will only register when yours comes to an end. Many will feel that pain in 2023, more in 2024. Drip, drip, drip....
If they're very lucky, the war will have eased an energy bills being paid won't be any higher in April 2023 than they are now. But that's the best case.
And meanwhile, who's up for another round of austerity folks?
Or. The political choices necessary to make them add up don't.
Fundamentals haven't changed no matter who sits in the big chair.
Then look at population growth.
We should have been building a couple of Oxfords every years for the past couple of decades. We haven’t.
That's where people need or want to live. People don't need or want to live in Scotland. Why should a young adult living in London who wants to move out of their parents home be told the only option is to move to Dumferline?
There should be green patches, like parks, reserved, but no need for an entire belt.
It is a very movable feast though. I can count at least 4 dates given.
The joke is that NIMBYism is driven by the GiantEstateOfExecutiveShitboxes crap. If someone said they wanted to build another street of houses in the local vernacular on the edge of the village, you’d get much less resistance.
Or (another new theory) Braverman was reappointed to assuage the headbangers, knowing she'd be forced out within a week. Is Rishi that Machiavellian?
It doesn't matter much if its the local vernacular, or executive, or anything else, people will still object because it "ruins their view/is too crowded/has no services/roads are congested/affects my house price/newts live there" or whatever other crap they want to come up with.