the other is to make it more difficult to run tens of thousands of bots, something which his investigation of the company flagged as a genuine problem.
They are making it easier to run fake identities
How does tying your account to a credit card, with a billing address or an iTunes account, make it easier to hide behind fake identities?
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
What's funny is that @StuartDickson genuinely seems to think he is one of them.
I'm proud of two long-term predictions I made on PB that somewhat went against the crowd: *) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup. *) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
The original plan was for the leadership candidates to submit their list of sponsors by 14:00 on Monday to the 1922 Committee who would spend the afternoon verifying each list. In the event Johnson and Mordaunt withdrew for different reasons, leaving Sunak in charge. But did verification continue, even when it was not necessary? If so, why? And if not, how can Brady confirm that Johnson had 100 genuine backers if he's relying on Johnson's own list? The conclusion of TSE's header is that Johnson was telling the truth for once. I'm not convinced.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
What's funny is that @StuartDickson genuinely seems to think he is one of them.
I'm proud of two long-term predictions I made on PB that somewhat went against the crowd: *) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup. *) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
Boris withdrew as he did not have the support of his party's MPs and that meant his government would have been unviable as Truss' was. Hence as Sunak did have the support of most Tory MPs he withdrew.
If however Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election then the party will almost certainly shift further to the populist right and that creates an opening for Boris if he holds his seat to run again
Can’t get over the amount of ignoring of a certain poster going on this morning.
Gin is one of the longest standing and nicest posters on PB.
Ishmael is the most acerbic. When it comes to debunking mean spirited right wing crackpots no one does it better. Just a pity his aim is sometimes so woeful and in Charles and Gin he's got it badly wrong
I think some leeway has to be given to someone fulfilling the role of PB's chief curmudgeon. I have some ambitions in that area myself but have to accept that Ishy and Malc are nonpareil.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
What's funny is that @StuartDickson genuinely seems to think he is one of them.
I'm proud of two long-term predictions I made on PB that somewhat went against the crowd: *) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup. *) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
I see InfoSys, the company Sunak's family profits heavily from, is still trading in Russia.
Infosys is an Indian company that specializes in outsourcing. If the Indian government has not imposed sanctions (which it has not), then it would be in breach of contract to walk out on existing obligations.
Absolutely true. But - What did you think when Trump became president and (apparently unlike previous presidents) didn't put his wealth into a blind trust? Seems there was a lot of fuss about conflict of interests at the time.
The PM is married to a foreign citizen, who is also extremely rich, and the daughter of a billionaire. Sure, India isn't a hostile power, but Sunak's father in law has supported Modi - who was banned from entering the UK for several years for his part in the massacres in Gujarat in 2002, and is currently quite supportive of Putin.
And hasn't Sunak himself urged people to cut off their business connections to Russia? He isn't setting a great example here.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
the other is to make it more difficult to run tens of thousands of bots, something which his investigation of the company flagged as a genuine problem.
They are making it easier to run fake identities
How does tying your account to a credit card, with a billing address or an iTunes account, make it easier to hide behind fake identities?
Given the vast majority of Twitter accounts are not going to pay $8 per month and will therefore remain unverified, how does that make it "more difficult to run tens of thousands of bots"?
This low-budget music video, from US counter-culture commentator Tim Pool, is currently #3 on the iTunes chart in the US, and the video has half a million views in a couple of days.
It’s showing a bunch of media figures singing the lyrics to the song. Not perfect, and clearly exaggerated for parody - but not a million miles away, and done on a tiny budget.
How long before someone motivated, or with a political donation-sized budget, can put together a plausible news report of an event that never happened?
We've seen some imbecilic shakes of the magic money tree since 2008 but the LibDems plan for taxpayers to pay for any increase in mortgage payments is one of the worst.
It would encourage people to overborrow and never to pay off mortgages.
Plus lead to even higher house prices.
Given the LibDem voter base the last would be seen as a benefit.
Is this a return to MIRAS they are proposing ?
It’s easy for them to promise anything as they are not,likely to be in power and could drop it in coalition negotiations. They have form there.
We've seen some imbecilic shakes of the magic money tree since 2008 but the LibDems plan to pay for taxpayers to pay for any increase in mortgage payments is one of the worst.
It would encourage people to overborrow and never to pay off mortgages.
Plus lead to even higher house prices.
Given the LibDem voter base the last would be seen as a benefit.
It is now the job of HM Government to stop anything nasty happening to anyone, ever. Nothing is anybody's fault anymore, moral hazard has been abolished and the responsibility of thinking for yourself has been removed.
The small detail of the country being made bankrupt as a result has so far been overlooked.
But this is where populism and the will of the people and who cares about doomsters ends up. Every time and everywhere.
And the Conservatives have a lot of the blame for the current iteration of populism in the UK.
Undeniably true. It was not a party political point (although it ought to be if the Conservatives remember what they are for).
A case for furlough etc can be made. After all the government was making it illegal for most businesses to operate in the public interest. The gas bills is a mistake and we can only hope that the cost of the scheme is not too catastrophic. Martin Lewis really screwed the pooch on that one. Mortgages? Jeez.
I see InfoSys, the company Sunak's family profits heavily from, is still trading in Russia.
Infosys is an Indian company that specializes in outsourcing. If the Indian government has not imposed sanctions (which it has not), then it would be in breach of contract to walk out on existing obligations.
Absolutely true. But - What did you think when Trump became president and (apparently unlike previous presidents) didn't put his wealth into a blind trust? Seems there was a lot of fuss about conflict of interests at the time.
The PM is married to a foreign citizen, who is also extremely rich, and the daughter of a billionaire. Sure, India isn't a hostile power, but Sunak's father in law has supported Modi - who was banned from entering the UK for several years for his part in the massacres in Gujarat in 2002, and is currently quite supportive of Putin.
And hasn't Sunak himself urged people to cut off their business connections to Russia? He isn't setting a great example here.
Re Boris, probably all of the list in the header, but also it was my (posted) belief that before he was deposed last summer, Boris was planning to retire early anyway, as Harold Wilson had done, so the prize was not worth much.
And to point 4, on money, it may also be that he realised that with one $150,000 speech, he could have paid for all three (or is it four now?) of the exotic holidays that he'd taken since July.
He is also bone idle.
Apparently Carrie was very fed up before. Boris has been able to cut and run, earn money, and mainly because of the even greater shitshow which followed, bask in the glow of his own adulation.
When the tories get thumped at the next election, he will probably be super smug.
Will he try to come back one day?
It is possible. COP27 has shown Boris has a more instinctive grasp of power politics than does Rishi, who was not going to Egypt until he discovered Boris was. But it is hard to imagine the circumstances which are favourable for the Conservatives under a putative Boris at the next election while simultaneously being bad enough to force out Rishi Sunak.
The way that Sunak was outmanouvered over COP27 by Johnson and by KC3 shows how politically naiive he can be. Not to mention stinking out his cabinet with Braverman, Sir Gavin Williamson etc.
Lay down with dogs etc.
A very swift rise means little time to develop political skills. He has some natural talent, but party relationship management may not be one of them.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
What's funny is that @StuartDickson genuinely seems to think he is one of them.
I'm proud of two long-term predictions I made on PB that somewhat went against the crowd: *) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup. *) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
So that's two arguable inights out of >30k posts.
The unborn child has human rights too of course
Does it?
And if so, at what age does it get those human rights? Conception? At term? Somewhere in between?
And on the other side, what about the human rights of the mother?
But these are all fairly standard questions at the heart of the abortion debate.
Order more mugs.. In the still possible event of Lab ending up as a minority government, the SNP are going to have big problems trying to avoid falling into line behind stuff like this.
We've seen some imbecilic shakes of the magic money tree since 2008 but the LibDems plan to pay for taxpayers to pay for any increase in mortgage payments is one of the worst.
It would encourage people to overborrow and never to pay off mortgages.
Plus lead to even higher house prices.
Given the LibDem voter base the last would be seen as a benefit.
It is now the job of HM Government to stop anything nasty happening to anyone, ever. Nothing is anybody's fault anymore, moral hazard has been abolished and the responsibility of thinking for yourself has been removed.
The small detail of the country being made bankrupt as a result has so far been overlooked.
We've passed the point where far too many people and organisations are net recipients of money from the government.
Its resulted in the financial infantilization of the country.
With the result that people do not look to increase their income or control their expenditure but immediately demand the government gives them more.
With plenty of politicians willing to pander to this mentality.
Boris withdrew as he did not have the support of his party's MPs and that meant his government would have been unviable as Truss' was. Hence as Sunak did have the support of most Tory MPs he withdrew.
If however Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election then the party will almost certainly shift further to the populist right and that creates an opening for Boris if he holds his seat to run again
Don't you suspect Johnson's star is beginning to descend? He was never really of the right. He made populist proclamations and his Benny Hill tribute act appealed to people yet to leave 1973.
Going forward, surely the Conservative Party have genuine Powellite ideologues to carry the torch. Although I am not sure Badenoch was the torch bearer Enoch had in mind.
We've seen some imbecilic shakes of the magic money tree since 2008 but the LibDems plan to pay for taxpayers to pay for any increase in mortgage payments is one of the worst.
It would encourage people to overborrow and never to pay off mortgages.
Plus lead to even higher house prices.
Given the LibDem voter base the last would be seen as a benefit.
It is now the job of HM Government to stop anything nasty happening to anyone, ever. Nothing is anybody's fault anymore, moral hazard has been abolished and the responsibility of thinking for yourself has been removed.
The small detail of the country being made bankrupt as a result has so far been overlooked.
That's true, but governments are partly to blame for the expectation because they over promise.
They also seem to be failing at the things it is their job to sort out, that is in their control, so they aren't going to get much sympathy from overblown demands.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
What's funny is that @StuartDickson genuinely seems to think he is one of them.
I'm proud of two long-term predictions I made on PB that somewhat went against the crowd: *) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup. *) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
So that's two arguable inights out of >30k posts.
Sorry, I couldn't list everyone there who offers insights. My memory isn't brilliant, for one.
You're quite right to cite those. Well ahead of their time.
That's what makes this site a must-read, and unique.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
What's funny is that @StuartDickson genuinely seems to think he is one of them.
I'm proud of two long-term predictions I made on PB that somewhat went against the crowd: *) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup. *) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
So that's two arguable inights out of >30k posts.
The unborn child has human rights too of course
Does it?
And if so, at what age does it get those human rights? Conception? At term? Somewhere in between?
And on the other side, what about the human rights of the mother?
But these are all fairly standard questions at the heart of the abortion debate.
Well certainly before birth.
The bigger the red wave on Tuesday of course, especially at state legislature and governor level, the more there will start to be an increase in restrictions on abortion in the US given the SC has now reversed Roe v Wade and the GOP will almost certainly take the House at least, stopping any Federal legislation enshrining the right to an abortion
One irony of this is that people are fleeing twitter for fear that they won't squish bad speech enough, but the platform is designed to make it impossible to squish bad speech. All you can do is remove it from your feed/server, the Nazis can carry on using the platform on their own. The tech is much more of an ideological match for what Elon was saying than what his enemies were saying.
Watching groups of people on Twitter, moaning about how awful Twitter is, is rather ironic. They want to moan, but they don’t want to quit. They really don’t like the idea that verification is actually about verification, rather than about status.
AIUI, the idea behind the verification changes is two-fold. One is to generate income from people who spend their whole lives on Twitter, making the company less reliant on fickle advertisers; the other is to make it more difficult to run tens of thousands of bots, something which his investigation of the company flagged as a genuine problem.
Musk seems to have calculated that ultimately most people won't go anywhere so risks can be taken. In the absence of a genuine rival, he's probably right.
It is a good analysis of current polling in TCTC elections but what was really interesting is that they address the elephant* in the room of polling. What they give are both the independent polling for each seat at the time of the last Presidency and the actual result, showing independent pollsters are simply not identifying an element of the republican support. This is the point made by the republican pollsters who, predictably, show better results for the GOP.
Who is right and have the "independents" addressed this bias in the meantime? If they haven't the Democrats face some seriously disappointing results.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
What's funny is that @StuartDickson genuinely seems to think he is one of them.
I'm proud of two long-term predictions I made on PB that somewhat went against the crowd: *) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup. *) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
So that's two arguable inights out of >30k posts.
Sorry, I couldn't list everyone there who offers insights. My memory isn't brilliant, for one.
You're quite right to cite those. Well ahead of their time.
That's what makes this site a must-read, and unique.
Long may it remain so.
NP. They're just two I remember where I think I was right for the right reasons; I witter on so much on here that I've probably said more (and almost certainly reversed my position in later posts...) Even then, they are arguable.
I see InfoSys, the company Sunak's family profits heavily from, is still trading in Russia.
Infosys is an Indian company that specializes in outsourcing. If the Indian government has not imposed sanctions (which it has not), then it would be in breach of contract to walk out on existing obligations.
Absolutely true. But - What did you think when Trump became president and (apparently unlike previous presidents) didn't put his wealth into a blind trust? Seems there was a lot of fuss about conflict of interests at the time.
The PM is married to a foreign citizen, who is also extremely rich, and the daughter of a billionaire. Sure, India isn't a hostile power, but Sunak's father in law has supported Modi - who was banned from entering the UK for several years for his part in the massacres in Gujarat in 2002, and is currently quite supportive of Putin.
And hasn't Sunak himself urged people to cut off their business connections to Russia? He isn't setting a great example here.
It is a good analysis of current polling in TCTC elections but what was really interesting is that they address the elephant* in the room of polling. What they give are both the independent polling for each seat at the time of the last Presidency and the actual result, showing independent pollsters are simply not identifying an element of the republican support. This is the point made by the republican pollsters who, predictably, show better results for the GOP.
Who is right and have the "independents" addressed this bias in the meantime? If they haven't the Democrats face some seriously disappointing results.
Yep, quite proud of that one.
I expect the GOP to take Nevada from the Democrats but the Democrats to cancel that by gaining Pennsylvania from the GOP, all other Senate seats will see the same party hold control of them. Georgia will go to a runoff in January to again determine Senate control is my prediction
It's not a social network in the classical sense, but I think I saw something the other day saying that ParkRun now have 8 million accounts. That's 1 for every thousand people on the planet.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Order more mugs.. In the still possible event of Lab ending up as a minority government, the SNP are going to have big problems trying to avoid falling into line behind stuff like this.
The way to do that is staff retention. There are a tsunami of departures happening, for a variety of reasons, much of which are fixable.
It does look as if the RCN have voted to strike, though not yet confirmed. There are real issues over nurses and junior doctors pay, but other conditions too.
the other is to make it more difficult to run tens of thousands of bots, something which his investigation of the company flagged as a genuine problem.
They are making it easier to run fake identities
How does tying your account to a credit card, with a billing address or an iTunes account, make it easier to hide behind fake identities?
Given the vast majority of Twitter accounts are not going to pay $8 per month and will therefore remain unverified, how does that make it "more difficult to run tens of thousands of bots"?
The plan is to make it much more difficult, for Tweets from unverified accounts to gain traction on the site. They’ll be assumed to be bots.
Order more mugs.. In the still possible event of Lab ending up as a minority government, the SNP are going to have big problems trying to avoid falling into line behind stuff like this.
The way to do that is staff retention. There are a tsunami of departures happening, for a variety of reasons, much of which are fixable.
It does look as if the RCN have voted to strike, though not yet confirmed. There are real issues over nurses and junior doctors pay, but other conditions too.
Demanding 5% over RPI, as they are, is not going to happen.
It is probably an opening position but totally unrealistic.
It is a good analysis of current polling in TCTC elections but what was really interesting is that they address the elephant* in the room of polling. What they give are both the independent polling for each seat at the time of the last Presidency and the actual result, showing independent pollsters are simply not identifying an element of the republican support. This is the point made by the republican pollsters who, predictably, show better results for the GOP.
Who is right and have the "independents" addressed this bias in the meantime? If they haven't the Democrats face some seriously disappointing results.
Yep, quite proud of that one.
I expect the GOP to take Nevada from the Democrats but the Democrats to cancel that by gaining Pennsylvania from the GOP, all other Senate seats will see the same party hold control of them. Georgia will go to a runoff in January to again determine Senate control is my prediction
I think that the conclusion I was coming to is that betting on a Republican controlled Senate looks a pretty good option at the moment. Oz is a deeply odd candidate but I am not so confident on the current polling that he is going to lose and there are risks for the Dems in both Arizona and Navada.
Obviously we may be inclined to believed the negative interpretations.
But it remains the base that his stated reasons for backing out were apparent before he had his people launch his campaign. So it definitely is not the whole truth.
This low-budget music video, from US counter-culture commentator Tim Pool, is currently #3 on the iTunes chart in the US, and the video has half a million views in a couple of days.
It’s showing a bunch of media figures singing the lyrics to the song. Not perfect, and clearly exaggerated for parody - but not a million miles away, and done on a tiny budget.
How long before someone motivated, or with a political donation-sized budget, can put together a plausible news report of an event that never happened?
At the risk of turning this into another conversation about AI art, I've been playing with the tech a lot the last few months and have even used it in some of my recent work.
The pace of development is frightening.
Off-the-shelf tools to create static images barely existed three months ago and the tech was decidedly wonky. Now you can download a bit of free software, tell it what you want, and it more or less gets there within about 4 or 5 iterations. Or five minutes, if you like.
The main limitation around AI for video at the moment is processing power. You have to do it on your own hardware, there's no WYSIWIG text to video interface yet so it takes a lot of knowledge, and it takes hours rather than seconds to generate results that are often suboptimal.
Once a product comes to market with a simple interface using remote servers to process data quickly (probably at huge cost, but still) the floodgates will be open.
We're about a year or so out from that happening, I reckon.
I hate to say it, but Leon was right about just how advanced this stuff is getting, and I was wrong about its usefulness and efficacy.
If he cuts higher rate relief on pension saving it's basically him signalling that over 65s are more important than the future of the economy. Would be the completely wrong move and signal that the state is now a slave to the DB and state pensioners for the next 30-50 years so everyone else better get ready to bend over.
A while back I half joked that in future I would work 6 months a year, 3 months to earn what I need to live on, 3 months to put the maximum in my pension.
If this is implemented I would be doing exactly that because I would be making sure my salary never went about £50,000..
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
Not many wage rises for average earners at the moment, certainly compared to inflation
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
Not many wage rises for average earners at the moment, certainly compared to inflation
We're forecast to hit 12m higher rate workers by 2026. That's over a third of the workforce. Inflation Is irrelevant to tax bands as they are frozen and look like they will continue to be frozen into 2027.
It is a good analysis of current polling in TCTC elections but what was really interesting is that they address the elephant* in the room of polling. What they give are both the independent polling for each seat at the time of the last Presidency and the actual result, showing independent pollsters are simply not identifying an element of the republican support. This is the point made by the republican pollsters who, predictably, show better results for the GOP.
Who is right and have the "independents" addressed this bias in the meantime? If they haven't the Democrats face some seriously disappointing results.
Yep, quite proud of that one.
I expect the GOP to take Nevada from the Democrats but the Democrats to cancel that by gaining Pennsylvania from the GOP, all other Senate seats will see the same party hold control of them. Georgia will go to a runoff in January to again determine Senate control is my prediction
I think that the conclusion I was coming to is that betting on a Republican controlled Senate looks a pretty good option at the moment. Oz is a deeply odd candidate but I am not so confident on the current polling that he is going to lose and there are risks for the Dems in both Arizona and Navada.
Well if the GOP do hold Pennsylvania then yes they take the Senate whatever happens in Georgia, hence Biden and Obama and Trump were all in Pennsylvania last night, Arizona though I think will now be a Democrat hold
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
The next election is going to be hilarious as Labour introduces schemes (return to the 2022 rules) to encourage middle earners to start paying into their pensions once again.
If you thought Truss’s polling was bad - if this goes ahead you’ve seen nothing yet.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
Not many wage rises for average earners at the moment, certainly compared to inflation
We're forecast to hit 12m higher rate workers by 2026. That's over a third of the workforce. Inflation Is irrelevant to tax bands as they are frozen and look like they will continue to be frozen into 2027.
Yes but even 33% is still not enough for the Tories to win a general election, it is basic rate only income tax payers who determine general elections
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
Not many wage rises for average earners at the moment, certainly compared to inflation
We're forecast to hit 12m higher rate workers by 2026. That's over a third of the workforce. Inflation Is irrelevant to tax bands as they are frozen and look like they will continue to be frozen into 2027.
Yes but even 33% is still not enough for the Tories to win a general election, it is basic rate only income tax payers who determine general elections
No, it's marginal and floating voters that determine election victories.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
Not many wage rises for average earners at the moment, certainly compared to inflation
Any wage increase (even below inflation) pushes you towards the next tax band if the tax bands are frozen and don’t increase.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
So tempted out off topic that too…
On your original point, I think you are right to an extent, but PB for me covers excellent betting advice (including but not limited to political) at the same time as covering other topics of interest, such as general politics (without the betting context), sport and some other random stuff (travel pics irritate some, but some enjoy them). To me PB serves the role of the bar in Cheers. You can always drop in, see the chat, join in if you want, or not. For sure a lot of the time stuff is nothing to do with political betting, but hey, if OGH didn’t want it to be this way he could step in. Plenty here for everyone.
🔵 All said Britain is ‘full’ and ‘at capacity’, politicians ‘don’t get it’ 🔵 Blame on immigration for problems with NHS, housing 🔵 Said Braverman’s description of ‘invasion’ was accurate 🔵 Felt that PM was wrong to appoint ‘naughty’ Braverman but she ‘has good ideas’ 🔵 Current Channel situation ‘unfair’ with Brits in poverty 🔵 Tories handling it badly - but most said they would trust them more on immigration than Labour
While flicking through the last threads I came across this posted by Carlotta and WilliamGlenn. Apparently a focus group. If evidence was needed to see the pitfalls of focus groups used like this this is it. If might describe the settled will of the Rees Mogg clan but to suggest it informs us of the thoughts of the British people as a whole is nonsense.
40% pension contribution relief is surely kite-flying? It’s been on every Chancellor’s hit list for at least a couple of decades, but is potlitical dynamite to actually introduce it. Behavioural changes (as highlighted by @eek and @MaxPB), especially alongside fiscal drag at a time of inflation, would undo a lot of the benefits while retaining all the political negatives.
The vast majority of the public believe that Britain has not regained control of its borders since Brexit, according to a new Observer poll that suggests that most do not think leaving the EU has improved the UK’s ability to manage immigration.
According to the latest Opinium poll, 73% think the UK has not been in control of its borders since Brexit. Only 12% think Britain has been in control. Meanwhile, only 9% of the public believe Brexit has made Britain’s ability to manage its borders better, while 45% think it has made it worse.
Those who backed Brexit are also taking a dim view. Only 7% of leave voters think the UK is in control of its borders since Brexit, while 85% think it is not.
Those are extraordinarily bad figures from Leavers for this government.
It is almost as if Brexit is an ideological dead end and wasted couple of decades. The wrong solution to the wrong problem.
🔵 All said Britain is ‘full’ and ‘at capacity’, politicians ‘don’t get it’ 🔵 Blame on immigration for problems with NHS, housing 🔵 Said Braverman’s description of ‘invasion’ was accurate 🔵 Felt that PM was wrong to appoint ‘naughty’ Braverman but she ‘has good ideas’ 🔵 Current Channel situation ‘unfair’ with Brits in poverty 🔵 Tories handling it badly - but most said they would trust them more on immigration than Labour
While flicking through the last threads I came across this posted by Carlotta and WilliamGlenn. Apparently a focus group. If evidence was needed to see the pitfalls of focus groups this is it. If might describe the settled will of the Rees Mogg clan but to suggest it informs us of the thoughts of the British people as a whole is nonsense.
That focus group picks up a definite chord of mainstream opinion. The problem the govt have is they’ve been in charge for ever and haven’t done much of any use about it other than talk tough.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
There’s two reasons to pay into a pension - one is the tax relief on contributions, and the other is employer contribution matching or similar schemes. Take those away, and your bog-standard investment account with Vanguard or similar, or paying off debts faster, become much more attractive.
(I’m researching this myself at the moment, saving for retirement in a low-tax environment. Most of the ‘pension’ savings plans are an expensively-managed rip-off).
Morning all! I did say that Boris would get on the members ballot and he had the numbers to do so. I said that he would have won the members ballot and I point to the large groundswell of pro-Boris foaming out there to back that up.
So, would have won. Chose not to run. Its always all about Boris, and the notion that being PM was too hard work doesn't wash. He would have skived as he did before.
Theory: they offered him something he couldn't refuse. Give it a few years and he will become Earl Johnson.
They offered him something he couldn’t refuse sounds a bit Mafia like.
Isnt T Blair still waiting for his peerage...?
No. If Blair wanted a peerage, he could have agreed that with Gordon Brown as a payoff for standing down. Mrs Thatcher was the last PM to go to the Lords; there does not seem to be the social cachet anymore.
Higher rate relief has been reduced has it not over time. How about reducing the amount you can put in per year from 40k to 30k? I'd be surprised if they got rid of it entirely.
The other point is why the UK economy has recovered so badly from covid. Very little theorising being done on that.
We've seen some imbecilic shakes of the magic money tree since 2008 but the LibDems plan to pay for taxpayers to pay for any increase in mortgage payments is one of the worst.
It would encourage people to overborrow and never to pay off mortgages.
Plus lead to even higher house prices.
Given the LibDem voter base the last would be seen as a benefit.
The idea is more aimed at the people who are about to get reamed by the price of mortgages shooting through the roof. People *have already* overborrowed - they had no choice. House prices are far higher than many working people can afford, but as rents are often even higher overborrowing was the least worst option.
If you are suggesting that politicians should be telling those families who will lose their homes that it is their fault, that's a brave strategy as we slide towards an election in a few years.
It’s shot for them, but it’s not the responsibility of tax payers to bail them out
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
Not many wage rises for average earners at the moment, certainly compared to inflation
We're forecast to hit 12m higher rate workers by 2026. That's over a third of the workforce. Inflation Is irrelevant to tax bands as they are frozen and look like they will continue to be frozen into 2027.
Yes but even 33% is still not enough for the Tories to win a general election, it is basic rate only income tax payers who determine general elections
No, it's marginal and floating voters that determine election victories.
And most of those are basic rate taxpayers, most higher rate and additional rate taxpayers almost always vote Conservative.
Indeed even from 1997 to 2010 the Conservatives still won the highest earners, it was average earners who joined those on low incomes and benefits to elect New Labour and Blair
40% pension contribution relief is surely kite-flying? It’s been on every Chancellor’s hit list for at least a couple of decades, but is potlitical dynamite to actually introduce it. Behavioural changes (as highlighted by @eek and @MaxPB), especially alongside fiscal drag at a time of inflation, would undo a lot of the benefits while retaining all the political negatives.
It is a difficult one. Even ignoring the political fallout, governments want to encourage pension savings so to do something that clearly discourages it seems silly, however it is a freebie that only those on higher incomes can access and is easy to tax and difficult to avoid. The worst of course is the income range that attracts personal allowance clawback with an effective tax rate of 60% (62% if you include NI). Anyone in the band £100,000 to around £120,000 who doesn't take advantage of AVCs is bonkers, but then that is of course due to our barmy effective marginal income tax rates that go up and down like a yoyo.
The vast majority of the public believe that Britain has not regained control of its borders since Brexit, according to a new Observer poll that suggests that most do not think leaving the EU has improved the UK’s ability to manage immigration.
According to the latest Opinium poll, 73% think the UK has not been in control of its borders since Brexit. Only 12% think Britain has been in control. Meanwhile, only 9% of the public believe Brexit has made Britain’s ability to manage its borders better, while 45% think it has made it worse.
Those who backed Brexit are also taking a dim view. Only 7% of leave voters think the UK is in control of its borders since Brexit, while 85% think it is not.
Those are extraordinarily bad figures from Leavers for this government.
It is almost as if Brexit is an ideological dead end and wasted couple of decades. The wrong solution to the wrong problem.
Order more mugs.. In the still possible event of Lab ending up as a minority government, the SNP are going to have big problems trying to avoid falling into line behind stuff like this.
The way to do that is staff retention. There are a tsunami of departures happening, for a variety of reasons, much of which are fixable.
It does look as if the RCN have voted to strike, though not yet confirmed. There are real issues over nurses and junior doctors pay, but other conditions too.
Demanding 5% over RPI, as they are, is not going to happen.
It is probably an opening position but totally unrealistic.
Also unrealistic to expect a 6% real terms pay cut to be acceptable, and the same planned for next year, when there are tens of thousands of staff vacancies.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
If you are a 40% tax payer the incentives to invest in a pension remain quite generous at the moment. If you invest £10k then you get £2k off your tax bill and £12k in your pot. Given the more flexible rules for drawdown that money will be relatively readily available once you get to a certain age where you might need it, the barriers against getting it back are much lower than they were. In addition annuity rates are suddenly looking much more attractive than they have been for the best part of a decade.
This is of course not financial advice which I am not qualified to give but right now, under the current regime, a pension contribution makes a lot of sense if you have some spare cash, much more tax efficient than paying down the mortgage.
40% pension contribution relief is surely kite-flying? It’s been on every Chancellor’s hit list for at least a couple of decades, but is potlitical dynamite to actually introduce it. Behavioural changes (as highlighted by @eek and @MaxPB), especially alongside fiscal drag at a time of inflation, would undo a lot of the benefits while retaining all the political negatives.
It is a difficult one. Even ignoring the political fallout, governments want to encourage pension savings so to do something that clearly discourages it seems silly, however it is a freebie that only those on higher incomes can access and is easy to tax and difficult to avoid. The worst of course is the income range that attracts personal allowance clawback with an effective tax rate of 60% (62% if you include NI). Anyone in the band £100,000 to around £120,000 who doesn't take advantage of AVCs is bonkers, but then that is of course due to our barmy effective marginal income tax rates that go up and down like a yoyo.
Oh it’s very easy to avoid in many cases - yep happy to do a 3 day week but I’m not doing any more as it’s not worth it.
Oh don’t worry if you don’t like it XYZ want me to join them and are happy for me to only do 3 days.
Higher rate relief has been reduced has it not over time. How about reducing the amount you can put in per year from 40k to 30k? I'd be surprised if they got rid of it entirely.
The other point is why the UK economy has recovered so badly from covid. Very little theorising being done on that.
My theory is that a large part of the populace is doing very well and doesn't have to work harder.
And another large part of the populace is struggling but is unable to do better for various reasons.
Leaving only a small number who have both the motive and means to do better.
And its the third group which drives economic growth.
You have to accept the site admin team won’t ban him indefinitely. Same with Leon in his many forms. At least Leon offers some interesting posts.
Just do what I, and many others as Ping says, do and ignore him. If he replies to one of my posts I just like it but won’t engage. He’s a nasty little shit who seems to be in a semi permanent drunken rage. Don’t let him get to you. My experience here is no worse, it’s far better, for ignoring him.
There are only a handful of posters I routinely ignore. Neither gin nor ish are among them. Ish is actually one of a limited group of PBers who has a distinctive ‘voice’: those who could change identity but be instantly recognisable. I think his main problem is that he is far, far too intelligent for this board, and most of you bore him to tears. When children are bored they sometimes use naughtiness to relieve the tedium. Welcome to PB.
Is PB more boring in its second decade than its first? Undoubtedly. A lot of absolute superstars have given up and the place is jam-packed with mindless dross. Still enough good posters around to make it worthwhile, but for how much longer? The site owners ought to dedicate some time to pondering how to encourage discussion on politics and betting and on how to gently discourage posting of holiday snaps, railway trivia and debates on whether London is located in the bottom right hand corner of England or not.
Somebody “Off-topic”ed that 😄 Quite impressive, considering that my post mentioned both politics and betting, and assessed the blog itself.
If we are going to start Off-topicing posts we’ll be here all day, cos on-topic posts are as rare as hens’ teeth.
You did insult, well, not all of us - I agree entirely with you - but at least a few folk who would not take kindly to being told they were thick compared to old Ish.
I don't think aggressively playing devil's advocate, in response to any number of points of view, and ladling some personal abuse on top is a sign of intelligence - we could all do it if we chose to do so. Nor is it a sign of intelligence to chose to do so because one is bored and is sporting for one's own entertainment - which I think is much more because he's hoping to provoke an aggressive reaction in response.
What's funny is that @StuartDickson genuinely seems to think he is one of them.
I'm proud of two long-term predictions I made on PB that somewhat went against the crowd: *) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup. *) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
There’s two reasons to pay into a pension - one is the tax relief on contributions, and the other is employer contribution matching or similar schemes. Take those away, and your bog-standard investment account with Vanguard or similar, or paying off debts faster, become much more attractive.
(I’m researching this myself at the moment, saving for retirement in a low-tax environment. Most of the ‘pension’ savings plans are an expensively-managed rip-off).
there is a third reason in that interest and dividends on pension investments are tax free. But ISAs do this as well. For a basic rate taxpayer the advantages are slim in terms of tax relief even now (given you will pay income tax when drawing the pension ) . When some people on here argue that NI and income tax shoudl be merged they forget that this would be very unfair on pensions as tax relief is only on income tax
If you want to save into a private pension I woudl do it in a SIPP as there are no fees beyond a very minimum monthly fixed fee (usually about £5) and transaction fee when buying or selling shares .
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
There’s two reasons to pay into a pension - one is the tax relief on contributions, and the other is employer contribution matching or similar schemes. Take those away, and your bog-standard investment account with Vanguard or similar, or paying off debts faster, become much more attractive.
(I’m researching this myself at the moment, saving for retirement in a low-tax environment. Most of the ‘pension’ savings plans are an expensively-managed rip-off).
Oh the only sane saving accounts are low cost trackers - anything else requires beating the market and that just isn’t viable long term.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
If you are a 40% tax payer the incentives to invest in a pension remain quite generous at the moment. If you invest £10k then you get £2k off your tax bill and £12k in your pot. Given the more flexible rules for drawdown that money will be relatively readily available once you get to a certain age where you might need it, the barriers against getting it back are much lower than they were. In addition annuity rates are suddenly looking much more attractive than they have been for the best part of a decade.
This is of course not financial advice which I am not qualified to give but right now, under the current regime, a pension contribution makes a lot of sense if you have some spare cash, much more tax efficient than paying down the mortgage.
Salary sacrifice is also a boost for pension saving:
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
A lot of people are using ISAs for this reason, it's too popular an instrument to fuck with so it's guaranteed tax free income.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
There’s two reasons to pay into a pension - one is the tax relief on contributions, and the other is employer contribution matching or similar schemes. Take those away, and your bog-standard investment account with Vanguard or similar, or paying off debts faster, become much more attractive.
(I’m researching this myself at the moment, saving for retirement in a low-tax environment. Most of the ‘pension’ savings plans are an expensively-managed rip-off).
So 100% agree. No sane person would put money into a DC pension scheme unless someone else put money in as well, be that an employer or the Government (via tax relief) or both. Taking both into account the return can be several hundred percent immediately
The vast majority of the public believe that Britain has not regained control of its borders since Brexit, according to a new Observer poll that suggests that most do not think leaving the EU has improved the UK’s ability to manage immigration.
According to the latest Opinium poll, 73% think the UK has not been in control of its borders since Brexit. Only 12% think Britain has been in control. Meanwhile, only 9% of the public believe Brexit has made Britain’s ability to manage its borders better, while 45% think it has made it worse.
Those who backed Brexit are also taking a dim view. Only 7% of leave voters think the UK is in control of its borders since Brexit, while 85% think it is not.
Those are extraordinarily bad figures from Leavers for this government.
It is almost as if Brexit is an ideological dead end and wasted couple of decades. The wrong solution to the wrong problem.
Boris withdrew as he did not have the support of his party's MPs and that meant his government would have been unviable as Truss' was. Hence as Sunak did have the support of most Tory MPs he withdrew.
If however Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election then the party will almost certainly shift further to the populist right and that creates an opening for Boris if he holds his seat to run again
Don't you suspect Johnson's star is beginning to descend? He was never really of the right. He made populist proclamations and his Benny Hill tribute act appealed to people yet to leave 1973.
Going forward, surely the Conservative Party have genuine Powellite ideologues to carry the torch. Although I am not sure Badenoch was the torch bearer Enoch had in mind.
There was a remarkably sympathetic profile of Kemi on Radio 4 this morning
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
If you are a 40% tax payer the incentives to invest in a pension remain quite generous at the moment. If you invest £10k then you get £2k off your tax bill and £12k in your pot. Given the more flexible rules for drawdown that money will be relatively readily available once you get to a certain age where you might need it, the barriers against getting it back are much lower than they were. In addition annuity rates are suddenly looking much more attractive than they have been for the best part of a decade.
This is of course not financial advice which I am not qualified to give but right now, under the current regime, a pension contribution makes a lot of sense if you have some spare cash, much more tax efficient than paying down the mortgage.
Salary sacrifice is also a boost for pension saving:
But that is what’s likely to be attacked here - because it will be the approach being used by most people / firms who allow additional contributions - heck Nest (and most other pension providers) recommend using Salary sacrifice because of the employer NI benefits.
This low-budget music video, from US counter-culture commentator Tim Pool, is currently #3 on the iTunes chart in the US, and the video has half a million views in a couple of days.
It’s showing a bunch of media figures singing the lyrics to the song. Not perfect, and clearly exaggerated for parody - but not a million miles away, and done on a tiny budget.
How long before someone motivated, or with a political donation-sized budget, can put together a plausible news report of an event that never happened?
At the risk of turning this into another conversation about AI art, I've been playing with the tech a lot the last few months and have even used it in some of my recent work.
The pace of development is frightening.
Off-the-shelf tools to create static images barely existed three months ago and the tech was decidedly wonky. Now you can download a bit of free software, tell it what you want, and it more or less gets there within about 4 or 5 iterations. Or five minutes, if you like.
The main limitation around AI for video at the moment is processing power. You have to do it on your own hardware, there's no WYSIWIG text to video interface yet so it takes a lot of knowledge, and it takes hours rather than seconds to generate results that are often suboptimal.
Once a product comes to market with a simple interface using remote servers to process data quickly (probably at huge cost, but still) the floodgates will be open.
We're about a year or so out from that happening, I reckon.
I hate to say it, but Leon was right about just how advanced this stuff is getting, and I was wrong about its usefulness and efficacy.
Yes, AI art is a very different subject, creating something that never previously existed.
Academics have already produced videos of Barack Obama and Joe Rogan, two people for whom there’s thousands of hours of reference material, but with massive budgets and university computers.
We’re getting closer to the day where you’ll be able to upload a short video of someone speaking, alongside a script, and have the engine churn out a video of the fake speech in short order.
Detecting fake speech video though, is something that humans have traditionally been really good at doing. The difficulty is in getting the mouth and eye movements ‘correct’, which isn’t necessary for an obvious parody pop music video, but would be for a fake news report.
It’s still scary what a budget of only a few grand gets you today though, and the technology is rapidly improving.
We've seen some imbecilic shakes of the magic money tree since 2008 but the LibDems plan to pay for taxpayers to pay for any increase in mortgage payments is one of the worst.
It would encourage people to overborrow and never to pay off mortgages.
Plus lead to even higher house prices.
Given the LibDem voter base the last would be seen as a benefit.
It is now the job of HM Government to stop anything nasty happening to anyone, ever. Nothing is anybody's fault anymore, moral hazard has been abolished and the responsibility of thinking for yourself has been removed.
The small detail of the country being made bankrupt as a result has so far been overlooked.
That's true, but governments are partly to blame for the expectation because they over promise.
They also seem to be failing at the things it is their job to sort out, that is in their control, so they aren't going to get much sympathy from overblown demands.
There might be a lot of anger next year when it turns out the government has not capped energy bills at £2,500 after all.
🔵 All said Britain is ‘full’ and ‘at capacity’, politicians ‘don’t get it’ 🔵 Blame on immigration for problems with NHS, housing 🔵 Said Braverman’s description of ‘invasion’ was accurate 🔵 Felt that PM was wrong to appoint ‘naughty’ Braverman but she ‘has good ideas’ 🔵 Current Channel situation ‘unfair’ with Brits in poverty 🔵 Tories handling it badly - but most said they would trust them more on immigration than Labour
While flicking through the last threads I came across this posted by Carlotta and WilliamGlenn. Apparently a focus group. If evidence was needed to see the pitfalls of focus groups this is it. If might describe the settled will of the Rees Mogg clan but to suggest it informs us of the thoughts of the British people as a whole is nonsense.
That focus group picks up a definite chord of mainstream opinion. The problem the govt have is they’ve been in charge for ever and haven’t done much of any use about it other than talk tough.
'A chord' describes it. This country has a nasty underbelly represented by these findings but if this was even the majority opinion let alone the unanimous one-as suggested by this focus group -then it would be a very depressing time time for us all
Higher rate relief has been reduced has it not over time. How about reducing the amount you can put in per year from 40k to 30k? I'd be surprised if they got rid of it entirely.
The other point is why the UK economy has recovered so badly from covid. Very little theorising being done on that.
My theory is that a large part of the populace is doing very well and doesn't have to work harder.
And another large part of the populace is struggling but is unable to do better for various reasons.
Leaving only a small number who have both the motive and means to do better.
And its the third group which drives economic growth.
I suspect a large number of the first group could do better if things went their way but have little incentive to do so.
And with the forthcoming budget will have even less reason to do so.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
If you are a 40% tax payer the incentives to invest in a pension remain quite generous at the moment. If you invest £10k then you get £2k off your tax bill and £12k in your pot. Given the more flexible rules for drawdown that money will be relatively readily available once you get to a certain age where you might need it, the barriers against getting it back are much lower than they were. In addition annuity rates are suddenly looking much more attractive than they have been for the best part of a decade.
This is of course not financial advice which I am not qualified to give but right now, under the current regime, a pension contribution makes a lot of sense if you have some spare cash, much more tax efficient than paying down the mortgage.
Salary sacrifice is also a boost for pension saving:
But that is what’s likely to be attacked here - because it will be the approach being used by most people / firms who allow additional contributions - heck Nest (and most other pension providers) recommend using Salary sacrifice because of the employer NI benefits.
If they get rid of salary sacrifice then the amount put into pensions will collapse.
But that would lead to more money for consumer spending now.
Am I too cynical to think that governments would prefer an increase in economic activity now even if it means a long term hit to the country's financial wellbeing ?
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
There’s two reasons to pay into a pension - one is the tax relief on contributions, and the other is employer contribution matching or similar schemes. Take those away, and your bog-standard investment account with Vanguard or similar, or paying off debts faster, become much more attractive.
(I’m researching this myself at the moment, saving for retirement in a low-tax environment. Most of the ‘pension’ savings plans are an expensively-managed rip-off).
So 100% agree. No sane person would put money into a DC pension scheme unless someone else put money in as well, be that an employer or the Government (via tax relief) or both. Taking both into account the return can be several hundred percent immediately
At the moment I am because my current choice is 100% (before tax) at some time in the future or 45% or so now (after employer NI, employee Ni at 2% and 40% income tax). And I’m happy to gamble that the tax I pay when I retire is less than 55%. Note that 45% is lower if you are at the £50,000 level and have children or £100,000+ level.
If that isn’t possible going forward I would reassess what I’m doing and probably work less
🔵 All said Britain is ‘full’ and ‘at capacity’, politicians ‘don’t get it’ 🔵 Blame on immigration for problems with NHS, housing 🔵 Said Braverman’s description of ‘invasion’ was accurate 🔵 Felt that PM was wrong to appoint ‘naughty’ Braverman but she ‘has good ideas’ 🔵 Current Channel situation ‘unfair’ with Brits in poverty 🔵 Tories handling it badly - but most said they would trust them more on immigration than Labour
While flicking through the last threads I came across this posted by Carlotta and WilliamGlenn. Apparently a focus group. If evidence was needed to see the pitfalls of focus groups this is it. If might describe the settled will of the Rees Mogg clan but to suggest it informs us of the thoughts of the British people as a whole is nonsense.
That focus group picks up a definite chord of mainstream opinion. The problem the govt have is they’ve been in charge for ever and haven’t done much of any use about it other than talk tough.
'A chord' describes it. This country has a nasty underbelly represented by these findings but if this was even the majority opinion let alone the unanimous one-as suggested by this focus group -then it would be very depressing time time for us all
Of course this is a focus group of swing voters - swing voters at a point where the Cons are 20% behind is likely to be quite right-wing. However, it gives you a hint why the Cons are pushing an issue that is basically their fault! It might work to an extent but first they have to remove the figurehead. Today's Opinium suggests Braverman's words strike a chord but that the woman herself is held in very low regard.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
If you are a 40% tax payer the incentives to invest in a pension remain quite generous at the moment. If you invest £10k then you get £2k off your tax bill and £12k in your pot. Given the more flexible rules for drawdown that money will be relatively readily available once you get to a certain age where you might need it, the barriers against getting it back are much lower than they were. In addition annuity rates are suddenly looking much more attractive than they have been for the best part of a decade.
This is of course not financial advice which I am not qualified to give but right now, under the current regime, a pension contribution makes a lot of sense if you have some spare cash, much more tax efficient than paying down the mortgage.
Yes absolutely. The thing is that I am a long way off retirement so just don't know how the rules about 'drawdown' will change over the course of time. What I do know however is that the government are always looking for ways of getting money, also they have tried things on with things like trying to increase student loan interest rates for repayment so I just don't regard them as being in any way reliable when it comes to making assumptions about my pension will be taxed in the future.
On thread. The reason was (2), (2), a thousand times (2)
My suspicion is that Johnson sought to save face. He was on or about 100 noms but not sure how many woud privately back out. So he agreed to step aside so long as the 1922 made clear that he had the numbers. Cue Mail editorials about 'selfless self-sacrifice' and a generation singing songs about the 'Prince over the water'.
Higher rate relief has been reduced has it not over time. How about reducing the amount you can put in per year from 40k to 30k? I'd be surprised if they got rid of it entirely.
The other point is why the UK economy has recovered so badly from covid. Very little theorising being done on that.
Brexit destroying markets in weird ways.
People reassessing their life’s and thinking a 4 day week or less gives me what I want and more time to do things I enjoy. Why work hard to earn enough for £10k holiday in the Caribbean say when for the same money you can have 26 or 52 more days at home for your hobbies.
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
There’s two reasons to pay into a pension - one is the tax relief on contributions, and the other is employer contribution matching or similar schemes. Take those away, and your bog-standard investment account with Vanguard or similar, or paying off debts faster, become much more attractive.
(I’m researching this myself at the moment, saving for retirement in a low-tax environment. Most of the ‘pension’ savings plans are an expensively-managed rip-off).
So 100% agree. No sane person would put money into a DC pension scheme unless someone else put money in as well, be that an employer or the Government (via tax relief) or both. Taking both into account the return can be several hundred percent immediately
At the moment I am because my current choice is 100% (before tax) at some time in the future or 45% or so now (after employer NI, employee Ni at 2% and 40% income tax). And I’m happy to gamble that the tax I pay when I retire is less than 55%. Note that is worse if you are at the £50,000 level and have children or £100,000+ level.
If that isn’t possible going forward I would reassess what I’m doing and probably work less
Becomes an issue surely though when you hit or get close to your LTA
In any sane country that advert that was highlighted in the thread yesterday would be enough on its own. As the great man said:
"Through many dark hour I been thinking about this That Jesus Christ Was betrayed by a kiss But I can’t think for ya' You’ll have to decide Whether Judas Iscariot Had God on his side"
Can't be done. They'll all leave the country for Monaco. As PB Tories regularly remind us.
He does need to balance the books but too many tax rises on the rich and that is a risk, he also needs tax cuts for average earners before the general election to have any chance of winning it
Given how many average earners re going to hit the 40% rate as wages rise and allowances don’t I can’t see this working out.
And if it's fine to tax pension savings on the way in and pension income on the way out for the current generation of workers then it's fine to do it for retirees. One rule for everyone.
I'm starting to have doubts about saving in a private pension. You are taking a risk already because firstly, its got to grow faster than inflation, and that is quite difficult; and secondly, there is a lot of uncertainty about how much it is going to be taxed when you claim it, because you are depending on the actions of future governments. If it is then also taxed at 20% on the way in, then the risk/reward metric gets changed. May as well just take the money now, even though it is taxed at about 50%; and pay off the mortgage instead.
There’s two reasons to pay into a pension - one is the tax relief on contributions, and the other is employer contribution matching or similar schemes. Take those away, and your bog-standard investment account with Vanguard or similar, or paying off debts faster, become much more attractive.
(I’m researching this myself at the moment, saving for retirement in a low-tax environment. Most of the ‘pension’ savings plans are an expensively-managed rip-off).
So 100% agree. No sane person would put money into a DC pension scheme unless someone else put money in as well, be that an employer or the Government (via tax relief) or both. Taking both into account the return can be several hundred percent immediately
At the moment I am because my current choice is 100% (before tax) at some time in the future or 45% or so now (after employer NI, employee Ni at 2% and 40% income tax). And I’m happy to gamble that the tax I pay when I retire is less than 55%. Note that is worse if you are at the £50,000 level and have children or £100,000+ level.
If that isn’t possible going forward I would reassess what I’m doing and probably work less
I do wonder how much of a problem early retirement is going to be in the next couple of decades.
We already hear of it with doctors, who find that their pension contributions are maxed out and part time work ends up paying nearly as much as full time work.
There’s a couple of (albeit very well-paid) posters on here, who have worked out that, with the mortgage paid off and a million or thereabouts in savings/investments, you can retire at that point close to being a higher-rate taxpayer for life, even if that’s in your late 40s.
Comments
*) Back in 2016, that the Trump's election may well lead to gradual backwards moves in human and civil rights in the US, as indeed we are seeing with abortion. And perhaps even the attempted coup.
*) At about the same time, that Boris would be a poor PM. Not because I'm politically miles away from him, or dislike him (I actually like him), but because he has certain character flaws that I could not see him conbatting.
Both were going somewhat against the prevailing mood on here. People seemed to think that liberalism was irreversible; it isn't. And too many people were willing to ignore Boris's flaws because of his Brexit stance, even if somewhat reluctantly.
So that's two arguable inights out of >30k posts.
I am sure he will aim for a Berlusconi-style comeback as PM in 2028 or 2032 though.
If however Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election then the party will almost certainly shift further to the populist right and that creates an opening for Boris if he holds his seat to run again
If you're bringing morality into it, it shouldn't only extend to the shareholders.
Especially the regional breakdowns.
All I have seen from Gallowgate is anger at old people. I’ll keep an eye out for other posts.
This low-budget music video, from US counter-culture commentator Tim Pool, is currently #3 on the iTunes chart in the US, and the video has half a million views in a couple of days.
It’s showing a bunch of media figures singing the lyrics to the song. Not perfect, and clearly exaggerated for parody - but not a million miles away, and done on a tiny budget.
How long before someone motivated, or with a political donation-sized budget, can put together a plausible news report of an event that never happened?
It’s easy for them to promise anything as they are not,likely to be in power and could drop it in coalition negotiations. They have form there.
A case for furlough etc can be made. After all the government was making it illegal for most businesses to operate in the public interest. The gas bills is a mistake and we can only hope that the cost of the scheme is not too catastrophic. Martin Lewis really screwed the pooch on that one. Mortgages? Jeez.
And if so, at what age does it get those human rights? Conception? At term? Somewhere in between?
And on the other side, what about the human rights of the mother?
But these are all fairly standard questions at the heart of the abortion debate.
In the still possible event of Lab ending up as a minority government, the SNP are going to have big problems trying to avoid falling into line behind stuff like this.
Its resulted in the financial infantilization of the country.
With the result that people do not look to increase their income or control their expenditure but immediately demand the government gives them more.
With plenty of politicians willing to pander to this mentality.
Going forward, surely the Conservative Party have genuine Powellite ideologues to carry the torch. Although I am not sure Badenoch was the torch bearer Enoch had in mind.
They also seem to be failing at the things it is their job to sort out, that is in their control, so they aren't going to get much sympathy from overblown demands.
You're quite right to cite those. Well ahead of their time.
That's what makes this site a must-read, and unique.
Long may it remain so.
The bigger the red wave on Tuesday of course, especially at state legislature and governor level, the more there will start to be an increase in restrictions on abortion in the US given the SC has now reversed Roe v Wade and the GOP will almost certainly take the House at least, stopping any Federal legislation enshrining the right to an abortion
https://twitter.com/AllisterHeath/status/1589173089044402177?s=20&t=l9sUd9d-WLHqL1eY1vbUGA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media#Most_popular_social_networking_services
It is a good analysis of current polling in TCTC elections but what was really interesting is that they address the elephant* in the room of polling. What they give are both the independent polling for each seat at the time of the last Presidency and the actual result, showing independent pollsters are simply not identifying an element of the republican support. This is the point made by the republican pollsters who, predictably, show better results for the GOP.
Who is right and have the "independents" addressed this bias in the meantime? If they haven't the Democrats face some seriously disappointing results.
Yep, quite proud of that one.
Order his wife to sell her shares?
I think that's an incredible number.
As David Cameron famously observed, “Twitter is not Britain”.
Something tiny like 5% of the UK population are daily active on the site, the vast majority of the site’s activity comes from a tiny number of users.
It does look as if the RCN have voted to strike, though not yet confirmed. There are real issues over nurses and junior doctors pay, but other conditions too.
It is probably an opening position but totally unrealistic.
Multiple sources and Twitter Blind chats now saying that the company has begun to reach out to some people it laid off yesterday asking them to come back. Whoops! 🥴
https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1589075543420325888
But it remains the base that his stated reasons for backing out were apparent before he had his people launch his campaign. So it definitely is not the whole truth.
The pace of development is frightening.
Off-the-shelf tools to create static images barely existed three months ago and the tech was decidedly wonky. Now you can download a bit of free software, tell it what you want, and it more or less gets there within about 4 or 5 iterations. Or five minutes, if you like.
The main limitation around AI for video at the moment is processing power. You have to do it on your own hardware, there's no WYSIWIG text to video interface yet so it takes a lot of knowledge, and it takes hours rather than seconds to generate results that are often suboptimal.
Once a product comes to market with a simple interface using remote servers to process data quickly (probably at huge cost, but still) the floodgates will be open.
We're about a year or so out from that happening, I reckon.
I hate to say it, but Leon was right about just how advanced this stuff is getting, and I was wrong about its usefulness and efficacy.
If this is implemented I would be doing exactly that because I would be making sure my salary never went about £50,000..
If you thought Truss’s polling was bad - if this goes ahead you’ve seen nothing yet.
Latest @JLPartnersPolls @TimesRadio swing voter focus group on immigration:
🔵 All said Britain is ‘full’ and ‘at capacity’, politicians ‘don’t get it’
🔵 Blame on immigration for problems with NHS, housing
🔵 Said Braverman’s description of ‘invasion’ was accurate
🔵 Felt that PM was wrong to appoint ‘naughty’ Braverman but she ‘has good ideas’
🔵 Current Channel situation ‘unfair’ with Brits in poverty
🔵 Tories handling it badly - but most said they would trust them more on immigration than Labour
https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1588462876620095488
While flicking through the last threads I came across this posted by Carlotta and WilliamGlenn. Apparently a focus group. If evidence was needed to see the pitfalls of focus groups used like this this is it. If might describe the settled will of the Rees Mogg clan but to suggest it informs us of the thoughts of the British people as a whole is nonsense.
🔵 All said Britain is ‘full’ and ‘at capacity’, politicians ‘don’t get it’
🔵 Blame on immigration for problems with NHS, housing
🔵 Said Braverman’s description of ‘invasion’ was accurate
🔵 Felt that PM was wrong to appoint ‘naughty’ Braverman but she ‘has good ideas’
🔵 Current Channel situation ‘unfair’ with Brits in poverty
🔵 Tories handling it badly - but most said they would trust them more on immigration than Labour
https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1588462876620095488
While flicking through the last threads I came across this posted by Carlotta and WilliamGlenn. Apparently a focus group. If evidence was needed to see the pitfalls of focus groups this is it. If might describe the settled will of the Rees Mogg clan but to suggest it informs us of the thoughts of the British people as a whole is nonsense.
That focus group picks up a definite chord of mainstream opinion. The problem the govt have is they’ve been in charge for ever and haven’t done much of any use about it other than talk tough.
They are whiny and pathetic. If a chief whip can’t cope with that kind of crap they are in the wrong job
(I’m researching this myself at the moment, saving for retirement in a low-tax environment. Most of the ‘pension’ savings plans are an expensively-managed rip-off).
The other point is why the UK economy has recovered so badly from covid. Very little theorising being done on that.
Indeed even from 1997 to 2010 the Conservatives still won the highest earners, it was average earners who joined those on low incomes and benefits to elect New Labour and Blair
Come to think about it the Osmonds look rather like the Romneys.
This is of course not financial advice which I am not qualified to give but right now, under the current regime, a pension contribution makes a lot of sense if you have some spare cash, much more tax efficient than paying down the mortgage.
Oh don’t worry if you don’t like it XYZ want me to join them and are happy for me to only do 3 days.
And another large part of the populace is struggling but is unable to do better for various reasons.
Leaving only a small number who have both the motive and means to do better.
And its the third group which drives economic growth.
If you want to save into a private pension I woudl do it in a SIPP as there are no fees beyond a very minimum monthly fixed fee (usually about £5) and transaction fee when buying or selling shares .
https://thepeoplespension.co.uk/salary-sacrifice/#:~:text=Salary sacrifice, sometimes known as,be treated as employer only.
https://twitter.com/alexthomp/status/1589055234336514048
Academics have already produced videos of Barack Obama and Joe Rogan, two people for whom there’s thousands of hours of reference material, but with massive budgets and university computers.
We’re getting closer to the day where you’ll be able to upload a short video of someone speaking, alongside a script, and have the engine churn out a video of the fake speech in short order.
Detecting fake speech video though, is something that humans have traditionally been really good at doing. The difficulty is in getting the mouth and eye movements ‘correct’, which isn’t necessary for an obvious parody pop music video, but would be for a fake news report.
It’s still scary what a budget of only a few grand gets you today though, and the technology is rapidly improving.
That focus group picks up a definite chord of mainstream opinion. The problem the govt have is they’ve been in charge for ever and haven’t done much of any use about it other than talk tough.
'A chord' describes it. This country has a nasty underbelly represented by these findings but if this was even the majority opinion let alone the unanimous one-as suggested by this focus group -then it would be a very depressing time time for us all
And with the forthcoming budget will have even less reason to do so.
But that would lead to more money for consumer spending now.
Am I too cynical to think that governments would prefer an increase in economic activity now even if it means a long term hit to the country's financial wellbeing ?
If that isn’t possible going forward I would reassess what I’m doing and probably work less
'A chord' describes it. This country has a nasty underbelly represented by these findings but if this was even the majority opinion let alone the unanimous one-as suggested by this focus group -then it would be very depressing time time for us all
Of course this is a focus group of swing voters - swing voters at a point where the Cons are 20% behind is likely to be quite right-wing. However, it gives you a hint why the Cons are pushing an issue that is basically their fault! It might work to an extent but first they have to remove the figurehead. Today's Opinium suggests Braverman's words strike a chord but that the woman herself is held in very low regard.
My suspicion is that Johnson sought to save face. He was on or about 100 noms but not sure how many woud privately back out. So he agreed to step aside so long as the 1922 made clear that he had the numbers. Cue Mail editorials about 'selfless self-sacrifice' and a generation singing songs about the 'Prince over the water'.
People reassessing their life’s and thinking a 4 day week or less gives me what I want and more time to do things I enjoy. Why work hard to earn enough for £10k holiday in the Caribbean say when for the same money you can have 26 or 52 more days at home for your hobbies.
As the great man said:
"Through many dark hour
I been thinking about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for ya'
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side"
We already hear of it with doctors, who find that their pension contributions are maxed out and part time work ends up paying nearly as much as full time work.
There’s a couple of (albeit very well-paid) posters on here, who have worked out that, with the mortgage paid off and a million or thereabouts in savings/investments, you can retire at that point close to being a higher-rate taxpayer for life, even if that’s in your late 40s.