Rishi Sunak will announce a significant rise in the national living wage and give eight million households cost of living payments worth up to £1,100 as he prioritises support for the poorest over universal measures.
The Times has been told that the prime minister and Jeremy Hunt, his chancellor, will accept an official recommendation to increase the living wage from £9.50 an hour to about £10.40 an hour — a rise of nearly 10 per cent. The move will benefit 2.5 million people. One government source suggested that the increase could be even higher.
Sunak will also give those on means-tested benefits, such as universal credit, cost of living payments worth £650; disability benefit recipients £150; and pensioner households £300. The plans, which extend existing support, will result in some households benefiting from all three payments.
All households will, however, still face a significant rise in average energy bills as the government increases the energy price guarantee from an average of £2,500 to as much as £3,100 from April.
Even this approach will cost the government billions. The Times has been told that internal forecasts by Ofgem, the energy regulator, suggest that average bills would reach £4,006 in April without the energy price guarantee.
What he gives with one hand he takes away with another.
Let’s see what happens Thursday. Council Tax looks like it will be allowed to rise, in future, by more than it is now. Councils will take that gladly.
Council tax, unreformed, is possibly the most unpopular tax going. If Sunak and Hunt allow that to be put up substantially they will absolutely crater in the south of England.
How on earth would reforming it solve anything -it would reveal how much house prices have increased down south relative to the north.
Depends on how you reformed it.
Knowing this iteration of the Tory party they'll exempt pensioners from council tax whilst increasing 30% for everybody else.
I think the next iteration of the Tory party in 15 years time is going to look very different.
But, it has to go into opposition first. And it might not come back under FPTP either.
The next successful iteration of the Conservative Party will be pro-European.
And it won’t be “Unionist”, as the Union will be history.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Also, how much is saved by pushbikes as a result of people not being as fat and therefore requiring fewer carbon intensive interventions for their health?
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
The environmental payback time for solar panels is very short. I don't know about batteries. Possible that the refining of the necessary metals uses more energy in that case, so the PayPal time would be a bit longer.
Of course, if someone's calories were mainly from chicken and potatoes, instead of beef and rice, then the push bike almost certainly wins out over the e-bike. It would be interesting to see how the e-bike compares to a car though.
The BBC article on the Lake win mentions in summary of the overall results that the new Congress will include its first openly gay Republican.
That does surprise me. I know the numbers of openly gay politicians here has increased significantly in a pretty short span, but many of them bring Conservative hasn't felt a surprise, so I assumed there must have been some in Congress for the GOP.
I thought Lake had lost? Fox has her down 20k with just over 1% to be counted. They seem to have called it.
I don't expect many people to have sympathy (because it's a high salary) but I moved firms at the end of 2021 and jumped from a salary of £92k to £135k, as i took a promotion as a director. It's taken me nearly 20 years of work to get there.
I honestly wonder why I bothered. The job is stressful, dealing with lots of people and client issues, bids and complex delivery issues, and I've lost all my personal allowance, all help with childcare, and am shortly to be taxed at top 45p rate. The extra rewards just aren't worth it.
It would probably be easier and simpler for me to take a job as a senior/experienced project manager at 85-90k with less stress. R perhaps find a way to go contract with my own company. Because it's otherwise just not worth it.
Yes, cry me a river but when people ask how tax affects choices and incentives, this is what they mean. Not sure I can bothered.
You're still (relatively) young. How much opportunity is there for further upwards promotion, for more money? If you're near the top of the org then it's probably not worth it - unless the experience will help you get a better-compensated job elsewhere.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Since environmentally we are moving to net zero carbon fuel sources anyway, its neither here nor there is it? If you have the solar panels anyway then the marginal environmental cost of the solar panels is precisely zero. If you eat more food for the pushbike, then that could be a marginal cost.
As we move to zero carbon electricity, we need to stop thinking about the carbon cost of electricity as there won't be any.
I don't expect many people to have sympathy (because it's a high salary) but I moved firms at the end of 2021 and jumped from a salary of £92k to £135k, as i took a promotion as a director. It's taken me nearly 20 years of work to get there.
I honestly wonder why I bothered. The job is stressful, dealing with lots of people and client issues, bids and complex delivery issues, and I've lost all my personal allowance, all help with childcare, and am shortly to be taxed at top 45p rate. The extra rewards just aren't worth it.
It would probably be easier and simpler for me to take a job as a senior/experienced project manager at 85-90k with less stress. R perhaps find a way to go contract with my own company. Because it's otherwise just not worth it.
Yes, cry me a river but when people ask how tax affects choices and incentives, this is what they mean. Not sure I can bothered.
I think one of the things that Britain is struggling with at the moment is an excess of things that are good politics, but bad policy.
Most of the things you are complaining about are good politics - not many people will have been upset at high earners losing the personal allowance - but they are bad policy, because of the distortions it introduces into the tax system. There are better ways of raising the same money with fewer distortions.
Much of my criticism of the government response to the energy crisis has been in the same vein. Good politics has overcome good policy.
The idealistic hope for the internet was that, by opening up access to information, it would make it harder for the media to distort reality, and so democracies would be able to make better choices. It's not working out that way so far.
The child benefit one is an odd one. We're single earner at present and have to pay back some child benefit as I'm higher rate. but our family income is significantly lower than a few years back when we were both working part time as basic rate tax payers and getting full child benefit. I get that it has t be fairly simple, but there's already a need to know both parents' incomes to check whether either is higher rate, so it wouldn't have been that difficult to base receipt on combined income.
Not wanting to whine - we're fine on my salary - it's just a bit peverse that we got more government help with child costs when we were actually a fair bit richer than we are now. I don't particularly think we should be geting child benefit, in a world where it's not universal (that's another debate) but in that case we definitely should not have done so when both earning a decent wage part time.
Our current tax system absolutely batters the high single earner. If my wife and I shared my income we would pay roughly £25k less tax. And yes, we might have got CB too.
Of course HMRC likes to have it both ways.
When it comes to taxation HMRC will look at a single earner and tax you more if you have a high single earnings.
But when it comes to benefits HMRC will look at a families income and cut or eliminate all benefits if you have two low earnings.
Another reason why the tax and benefit system should be merged. There should be consistency. If a families income is what matters for benefits, it should also be what matters for tax, just as in other countries like France.
An advantage of a Universal Basic Income system is that it makes no odds either way.
The BBC article on the Lake win mentions in summary of the overall results that the new Congress will include its first openly gay Republican.
That does surprise me. I know the numbers of openly gay politicians here has increased significantly in a pretty short span, but many of them bring Conservative hasn't felt a surprise, so I assumed there must have been some in Congress for the GOP.
I thought Lake had lost? Fox has her down 20k with just over 1% to be counted. They seem to have called it.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
I am almost never in a car since getting an e-bike. Giving people grants to help buy e-bikes maybe one of the cost-efficient ways to reduce CO2 and pollution?
There's cycle to work scheme for people in employment here. But that's another odd regressive tax situation, really, much higher savings (on same bike) for higher earners who can better afford it in the first place. And, of course, not open at all to those on minimum wage (can't salary sacrifice as that would take them below minimum wage).
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Also, how much is saved by pushbikes as a result of people not being as fat and therefore requiring fewer carbon intensive interventions for their health?
Missing the point. E-bikes don't replace push bikes; they replace no-bikes.
The BBC article on the Lake win mentions in summary of the overall results that the new Congress will include its first openly gay Republican.
That does surprise me. I know the numbers of openly gay politicians here has increased significantly in a pretty short span, but many of them bring Conservative hasn't felt a surprise, so I assumed there must have been some in Congress for the GOP.
I thought Lake had lost? Fox has her down 20k with just over 1% to be counted. They seem to have called it.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Also, how much is saved by pushbikes as a result of people not being as fat and therefore requiring fewer carbon intensive interventions for their health?
Missing the point. E-bikes don't replace push bikes; they replace no-bikes.
An e-bike, unmodified, is also a source of exercise, of course (you have to pedal).
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Since environmentally we are moving to net zero carbon fuel sources anyway, its neither here nor there is it? If you have the solar panels anyway then the marginal environmental cost of the solar panels is precisely zero. If you eat more food for the pushbike, then that could be a marginal cost.
As we move to zero carbon electricity, we need to stop thinking about the carbon cost of electricity as there won't be any.
This is another reason why we should be aiming for a large surplus of zero carbon electricity.
An end to the sterile debates of wind or nuclear, tidal or solar. Lots of all of it.
With a large, clean, energy surplus lots of good things will become possible.
I don't expect many people to have sympathy (because it's a high salary) but I moved firms at the end of 2021 and jumped from a salary of £92k to £135k, as i took a promotion as a director. It's taken me nearly 20 years of work to get there.
I honestly wonder why I bothered. The job is stressful, dealing with lots of people and client issues, bids and complex delivery issues, and I've lost all my personal allowance, all help with childcare, and am shortly to be taxed at top 45p rate. The extra rewards just aren't worth it.
It would probably be easier and simpler for me to take a job as a senior/experienced project manager at 85-90k with less stress. R perhaps find a way to go contract with my own company. Because it's otherwise just not worth it.
Yes, cry me a river but when people ask how tax affects choices and incentives, this is what they mean. Not sure I can bothered.
Others on here could have told you that based on their experience.
One reason so many people contract is that it allows them to escape a large amount of the corporate bullshit and just focus on the work they enjoy
Edit - it's also why so many management roles are now impossible to fill - why do xyz for £5,000 more when it's really just £200 a month extra cash.
I'm trying to think what my most extravagant and foolhardy purchase has been thus far. We've all done it, thrown a bit too much money on a purchase that wasn't really worth it, but felt like a good idea at the time.
There was about £150 on a watch. Which doesn't actually keep particularly good time, but it is pretty. I'm not really that much different from Musk am I? It's simply a matter of scale.
The difference is that you didn't start smashing up the watch as soon as you'd bought it.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Also, how much is saved by pushbikes as a result of people not being as fat and therefore requiring fewer carbon intensive interventions for their health?
Missing the point. E-bikes don't replace push bikes; they replace no-bikes.
An e-bike, unmodified, is also a source of exercise, of course (you have to pedal).
Another point is that people use e-bikes so that they don’t need a shower at the other end - know some commuting types who say this.
🧵The Lib Dems have revised their definition of “transphobia” following advice from top #EqualityLaw KC Karon Monaghan. Other parties with definitions which discriminate against those who hold gender critical beliefs would be well advised to do likewise 1/2
Karon Monaghan KC is the barrister John Nicholson MP SNP snarked as “relatively competent” after she eviscerated his pompous arse on the witness stand….
I'm trying to think what my most extravagant and foolhardy purchase has been thus far. We've all done it, thrown a bit too much money on a purchase that wasn't really worth it, but felt like a good idea at the time.
There was about £150 on a watch. Which doesn't actually keep particularly good time, but it is pretty. I'm not really that much different from Musk am I? It's simply a matter of scale.
The difference is that you didn't start smashing up the watch as soon as you'd bought it.
Though people do that too.
I know people who've spent more than they could on a car then started ragging it as soon as they've got it.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Also, how much is saved by pushbikes as a result of people not being as fat and therefore requiring fewer carbon intensive interventions for their health?
Missing the point. E-bikes don't replace push bikes; they replace no-bikes.
An e-bike, unmodified, is also a source of exercise, of course (you have to pedal).
Another point is that people use e-bikes so that they don’t need a shower at the other end - know some commuting types who say this.
So add in the energy usage of a shower?
Damn. I switched my commute to a me-powered bike, which is apparently worse than running a cable from my e-bike direct to Drax in pure coal-fired days, and shower when I get to work. What have I done?
Mind you, on showers, I don't shower before cycling on commute days, so I just displace a shower from home to work.
Scottish Parliament now policing what people wear to hearings:
A woman sitting quietly in the row behind me at the @SP_EHRCJStage 2 hearing on the GRR Bill wearing a purple, white and green knitted scarf, has just been asked to take it off or leave the hearing. She has left.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Also, how much is saved by pushbikes as a result of people not being as fat and therefore requiring fewer carbon intensive interventions for their health?
Missing the point. E-bikes don't replace push bikes; they replace no-bikes.
An e-bike, unmodified, is also a source of exercise, of course (you have to pedal).
Another point is that people use e-bikes so that they don’t need a shower at the other end - know some commuting types who say this.
So add in the energy usage of a shower?
Damn. I switched my commute to a me-powered bike, which is apparently worse than running a cable from my e-bike direct to Drax in pure coal-fired days, and shower when I get to work. What have I done?
Mind you, on showers, I don't shower before cycling on commute days, so I just displace a shower from home to work.
But don't you shower twice on cycling days versus once normally?
Scottish Parliament now policing what people wear to hearings:
A woman sitting quietly in the row behind me at the @SP_EHRCJStage 2 hearing on the GRR Bill wearing a purple, white and green knitted scarf, has just been asked to take it off or leave the hearing. She has left.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
The environmental payback time for solar panels is very short. I don't know about batteries. Possible that the refining of the necessary metals uses more energy in that case, so the PayPal time would be a bit longer.
Of course, if someone's calories were mainly from chicken and potatoes, instead of beef and rice, then the push bike almost certainly wins out over the e-bike. It would be interesting to see how the e-bike compares to a car though.
Not convinced that riding an ebike makes people eat less than riding a push bike.
Ebikes produce a fraction of the CO2 emissions of cars.
They are also fun to cycle, produce less of other types of pollution (including noise pollution), you get a bit of exercise, you don't have range anxiety, you don't need any special charging infrasctructure, cause less congestion, much smaller footprint to manufacture, etc.
I read somewhere that those e-scooters that are everywhere now are not very environmentally friendly for a whole bunch of reasons.
Scottish Parliament now policing what people wear to hearings:
A woman sitting quietly in the row behind me at the @SP_EHRCJStage 2 hearing on the GRR Bill wearing a purple, white and green knitted scarf, has just been asked to take it off or leave the hearing. She has left.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A push bike is much better for the climate.
Not sure that's true. E-bikes open up the possibility of commutes for people who simply couldn't do them on push bikes, for example.
There's also probably a study showing that an e-bike produces less CO2 per journey than a cyclist on a standard bike (possibly involving some heroic assumptions about electricity generation source)
If the calories for the cycling come mainly from beef and rice, and the e-bike is charged by solar panels, it's pretty easy to make such a calculation work. But I know that most of my cycling calories come from sugar cane and sugar beet.
How far would you have to cycle to make up for the environmental cost of manufacturing the battery and the solar panels?
Also, how much is saved by pushbikes as a result of people not being as fat and therefore requiring fewer carbon intensive interventions for their health?
Missing the point. E-bikes don't replace push bikes; they replace no-bikes.
An e-bike, unmodified, is also a source of exercise, of course (you have to pedal).
Another point is that people use e-bikes so that they don’t need a shower at the other end - know some commuting types who say this.
So add in the energy usage of a shower?
Damn. I switched my commute to a me-powered bike, which is apparently worse than running a cable from my e-bike direct to Drax in pure coal-fired days, and shower when I get to work. What have I done?
Mind you, on showers, I don't shower before cycling on commute days, so I just displace a shower from home to work.
But don't you shower twice on cycling days versus once normally?
Who says that PB got boring?
I wondered if anyone would spot that
ETA: I commute twice a week, so I cut my shower time by 23% in each shower to compensate. So it's all good
The BBC article on the Lake win mentions in summary of the overall results that the new Congress will include its first openly gay Republican.
That does surprise me. I know the numbers of openly gay politicians here has increased significantly in a pretty short span, but many of them bring Conservative hasn't felt a surprise, so I assumed there must have been some in Congress for the GOP.
I thought Lake had lost? Fox has her down 20k with just over 1% to be counted. They seem to have called it.
If she's lost, that's a win.
Especially for her. She now gets to do the full Trump big steal story line just like her hero.
Scottish Parliament now policing what people wear to hearings:
A woman sitting quietly in the row behind me at the @SP_EHRCJStage 2 hearing on the GRR Bill wearing a purple, white and green knitted scarf, has just been asked to take it off or leave the hearing. She has left.
But MSPs wearing rainbow lanyards is absolutely fine….
Isn't purple, white and green the century-old colour combination for women/suffragettes? As utilised by Pankhurst etc?
So women's colours are verboten now in Sturgeon's Scottish Parliament, while rainbow is perfectly acceptable?
Ridiculous. Rainbow of course should be acceptable, but so too should women's colours. And if one is banned, both should be. Cherrypicking one isn't how a Parliament with free expression for all is supposed to work in a free society.
* 8m households will get cost-of-living payments worth up to £1,100 to help with bills
* But average energy bills will still rise by a quarter to more than £3,000…
Sunak strategy is to target support at those who need it most
But Resolution Foundation points out that there is a huge 'cliff edge' - if you earn £1 too much and are not on benefits you miss out on govt cost of living payments
Scottish Parliament now policing what people wear to hearings:
A woman sitting quietly in the row behind me at the @SP_EHRCJStage 2 hearing on the GRR Bill wearing a purple, white and green knitted scarf, has just been asked to take it off or leave the hearing. She has left.
But MSPs wearing rainbow lanyards is absolutely fine….
I had to look that up to discover the significance of the colour combo.
Makes me wonder what political statements I might be inadvertently making each day due to throwing things together from my wardrobe
Wow. They couldn't make it more obvious. A woman has had to leave a Scottish Parliament hearing because she refused to take off a scarf in suffragette colours. They really want to roll back women's rights all the way
Lolz at Rishi Sunak trying to make a positive headline out of confirming eight Type 26, City-class frigates will be built: 1) That's always been the case 2) Those eight are replacing, um, THIRTEEN, Type 23, Duke-class frigates ...Embarrassingly, Def Sec Ben Wallace had to admit last week the first vessel is already a year behind schedule and that delay will cost us £233m https://mobile.twitter.com/benglaze/status/1592400418763845632
Might as well tack on several extra years and billions on every estimate, to stop being surprised.
“[Lake] has emerged as a Republican phenom by amplifying Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen,” read the subhead of its even longer profile. Last week, Axios went several steps further and reported that top Democratic strategists now believe Lake has the “potential to soar to a vice presidential spot or a post-Trump presidential candidacy.”
PB-ers will no doubt be grateful that I pointed out all of this: several weeks before the actual American media.
I am sure PB-ers will show our gratitude for this priceless tip in the usual way….
No wonder Leondamus is leaving PB, what.three.words, Liz Truss will be an awesome PM, and now Kari Lake.
His departure will be a shame as PB loses its most important (anti-tipster) tool.
Still aliens and Dall-E though.
The whole nation awaits the next reincarnation with bated breath.
I'm surprised there has been so little comment on the self serving nonsense Luntz is spouting above. Perhaps no one bothered to watch it? Let's hope the BBC will and won't waste too much license payers money on that particular charlatan next time.
Rishi Sunak will announce a significant rise in the national living wage and give eight million households cost of living payments worth up to £1,100 as he prioritises support for the poorest over universal measures.
The Times has been told that the prime minister and Jeremy Hunt, his chancellor, will accept an official recommendation to increase the living wage from £9.50 an hour to about £10.40 an hour — a rise of nearly 10 per cent. The move will benefit 2.5 million people. One government source suggested that the increase could be even higher.
Sunak will also give those on means-tested benefits, such as universal credit, cost of living payments worth £650; disability benefit recipients £150; and pensioner households £300. The plans, which extend existing support, will result in some households benefiting from all three payments.
All households will, however, still face a significant rise in average energy bills as the government increases the energy price guarantee from an average of £2,500 to as much as £3,100 from April.
Even this approach will cost the government billions. The Times has been told that internal forecasts by Ofgem, the energy regulator, suggest that average bills would reach £4,006 in April without the energy price guarantee.
What he gives with one hand he takes away with another.
Let’s see what happens Thursday. Council Tax looks like it will be allowed to rise, in future, by more than it is now. Councils will take that gladly.
With two big southern Tory councils on the verge of bankruptcy it truly is the perfect storm. Taxes increased from absurd to ludicrous. Services cut from crumbling to not there. Paying the most we've ever done in peacetime for the worst services.
Yes, the opposition will have to do some work to propose their planned route back to recovery. But this will smash completely the Tories economic reputation. After 12 years in office it really is their fault.
Yes, things being crap and expensive is not a good look. Makes people think their taxes are being wasted.
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
I'm surprised there has been so little comment on the self serving nonsense Luntz is spouting above. Perhaps no one bothered to watch it? Let's hope the BBC will and won't waste too much money on that particular charlatan next time.
TL;DW: We've been waiting for someone to save our valuable time by posting a succinct description.
Whether it prospers or not is, however, up to us. That's the point of Brexit
It is not prospering
That is the fact of Brexit
If so, we need to fix that. And Brexit gives us the regulatory powers to do that
We probably have to be more adventurous. The EU market is gone for ever. That's a blow, but it can be a boon, in the end
We cut off our own leg.
That's a blow, but it can be a boon, in the end...
Yes good for hopping competitions
And a significant reduction in shoe wear.
I would have thought it would increase shoe wear as more pressure would go on that one shoe. Meanwhile, you still have to buy pairs of shoes.
There must be a market for single shoes. After all average human has just under 2 legs.
For a period when I was in my mid teens, I had my leg in a cast for around six months (actually two casts, as my leg lost so much muscle they had to redo it a few months in. When I had to get new shoes, my dad joked about having to buy two when I only needed one...
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
I'm surprised there has been so little comment on the self serving nonsense Luntz is spouting above. Perhaps no one bothered to watch it? Let's hope the BBC will and won't waste too much license payers money on that particular charlatan next time.
Can confirm, I saw it was Luntz and went back to the Mastodon #goats hashtag.
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
I'm surprised there has been so little comment on the self serving nonsense Luntz is spouting above. Perhaps no one bothered to watch it? Let's hope the BBC will and won't waste too much money on that particular charlatan next time.
TL;DW: We've been waiting for someone to save our valuable time by posting a succinct description.
It's time to move on from Trump, "we appreciate what you've done but GO HOME." Plus the media shouldn't waste time asking why the pollsters and pundits got things wrong (this bit was a waste of time from Luntz).
Meanwhile, by this time tomorrow Trump will have formally announced his candidacy.
I’m thinking of buying an e-bike because they’re good for the climate. You can get some nice ones that cost between £100-£200.
A 200 quid eeb is fucking junk that will burn your house to the ground. Don't be a tight git and get a Canyon Neuron: ON 9 if you're too weak to pedal.
Dura isn't joking about burning your house to the ground. The battery pack won't have over volt prrotection and will burst into flames if plugged in for too ling.
Which would be considerably more economically damaging.
Is that madness too?
Obviously that's different. For reasons.
One is largely driven by a weird mixture of principled people who prize sovereignty above economics and nutty small minded xenophobes, who don't really have a clue what they're doing but somehow sneak just above 50% of the vote when it matters.
💥 Ex FCDO chief @SimonMcDonaldUK confirms my story he spoke to Dominic Raab.
"It was language, it was tone, he would be very curt with people. He did this in front of a lot of other people. I think people felt demeaned. I tried to have that conversation with him." @TimesRadio
Presenter @MattChorley asks: "So having raised it with him, you then raised it informally with the proprietary and ethics team at the Cabinet Office?"
Simon McDonald: "That's true".
He adds that he wasn't aware of any formal complaints.
McDonald says existing bullying complaints system is "not fit for purpose".
"Action is only taken if there's a formal complaint & there's a feeling in the system that it's stacked in favour of the minister or senior official. So people hesitate to make a formal complaint.."
The Roe/Wade supreme court verdict probably cost the Republicans control of the Senate. It's possible they'll fail to win control by 5,000 switchers and those will have been women annoyed by that decision.
Boris Johnson told us his Brexit trade deal with Australia was a "fantastic" deal for the UK.
Now his former Environment Secretary admits it was "not actually a very good deal... The truth is the UK gave away far too much for far too little in return."
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
The NHS is well past the point of diminishing marginal returns.
As I suspect almost all government and most private spending is in the UK.
Perhaps energy efficiency is one area which isn't but how many others are there ?
From my experiences with the NHS, it acts as a Healthcare prevention service. That is, the medical staff seem to have to fight the system to actual get things done.
During the 1980s as British Leyland staggered to its doom, other car companies setup factories to make cars. Often, they employed people in both workforce and management from the old car companies. Yet they managed to build high quality cars, cheaply and with little industrial strife. While strike ridden BL failed at all of this.
That Type 26 business is funny. Sunak has learned the fine art of the reannouncement from Johnson. Expect to see the announcement again at least twice before the election.
I took it as clearly watering the ground for scrapping the 3% promise. “Don’t look at the u-turn, look over here at all the expensive goodies defence will be getting.”
The Roe/Wade supreme court verdict probably cost the Republicans control of the Senate. It's possible they'll fail to win control by 5,000 switchers and those will have been women annoyed by that decision.
What's really impressive is that at this moment the odds are they will go backwards. The last time a governing party made net gains in the Senate at midterms was 2002, and the last time the Dems did was in 1962.
The BBC article on the Lake win mentions in summary of the overall results that the new Congress will include its first openly gay Republican.
That does surprise me. I know the numbers of openly gay politicians here has increased significantly in a pretty short span, but many of them bring Conservative hasn't felt a surprise, so I assumed there must have been some in Congress for the GOP.
I think the BBC means first elected out gay Republican (ie was out when they stood successfully for election) - there have been more than a few gay Republicans before:
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
The Roe/Wade supreme court verdict probably cost the Republicans control of the Senate. It's possible they'll fail to win control by 5,000 switchers and those will have been women annoyed by that decision.
Is there any evidence that this issue energises pro-choicers more than pro-lifers? Or that it energises more women than men? Dems seem to think it's a magic bullet but they'd be well-advised to have a few others, just in case. If toxic Trump leaves the scene one way or another their right flank is vulnerable to a younger, more presentable Republican.
That Type 26 business is funny. Sunak has learned the fine art of the reannouncement from Johnson. Expect to see the announcement again at least twice before the election.
I took it as clearly watering the ground for scrapping the 3% promise. “Don’t look at the u-turn, look over here at all the expensive goodies defence will be getting.”
Will Wallace walk?
Of course not. Apart from the fact that the chafing between his massive fucking fat thighs makes walking difficult he did nothing when Johnson cut 10,000 troops 18 months after saying he wouldn't.
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
(social care was the one that came to my mind, but the others are good points, too)
In my recent experience (12 nights with broken hip & elbow) I could have been discharged two days faster if the different services were better at talking to each other. While the surgical side did feel “joined up” (an initial plan to delay operating on my elbow quashed in favour of more urgent treatment) the rest was disjointed. I saw this repeatedly in my 6 bed ward - discharge delayed because not all the paperwork was sorted. I counted myself lucky with a two day delay, and in the end that was nearly three.
The Roe/Wade supreme court verdict probably cost the Republicans control of the Senate. It's possible they'll fail to win control by 5,000 switchers and those will have been women annoyed by that decision.
What's really impressive is that at this moment the odds are they will go backwards. The last time a governing party made net gains in the Senate at midterms was 2002, and the last time the Dems did was in 1962.
It's quite an achievement.
As the Conservative Supreme Court undermined Conservative America, and bit the hand which helped them in Donald, could they have held off their announcement till next February?
Membership of the EU is the exception in Britain's history, not the rule, and most of that time we've done extremely well outside it. As a country, we have excellent resources, geography, and other advantages like language
We don't have excellent resources anymore. We can't feed ourselves, or power the nation.
Our excellent Geography is that we are close to Europe. That means trade with Europe is the BIG advantage, and the one we pissed away.
Language is perhaps a boon, except we are now maybe the only mono-lingual country on Earth. That is not an advantage.
While we were members of the EU we prospered.
And since we left, we haven't.
I can always tell which parts of my posts you feel undermine your piss-weak arguments the most because you edit them out.
Our geographical advantage is that we are a set of islands. That protects us from turmoil in Europe, unless of course we invite it in.
We have vast home grown resources. How we have captured and deployed those resources up until now, and how we might do so in the future, are two different things. We have plentiful water, fertile agricultural land, good fish stocks, oil, gas and coal, and plenty of renewable options like offshore wind and tidal. That's more than almost any other European nation can boast.
Your attempt to deny all this and your final sign off are incoherent and sound a bit manic frankly. I am concerned about your state of mind, and surprised that so many of your co-believers have chosen to endorse your post rather than kindly suggest to you to take a break.
The Roe/Wade supreme court verdict probably cost the Republicans control of the Senate. It's possible they'll fail to win control by 5,000 switchers and those will have been women annoyed by that decision.
What's really impressive is that at this moment the odds are they will go backwards. The last time a governing party made net gains in the Senate at midterms was 2002, and the last time the Dems did was in 1962.
If you look at the 'national living wage' or 'minimum wage', it was £6.19 in 2012 and now supposedly going up to £10.50.That is a 70 % increase over 10 years.
The reality is that most other wages have gone up at anywhere near the same rate. The public sector job I was doing in 2012 was paid at about £39,000. It is now advertised for about £45,000. If it went up at the same pace as the minimum wage it should be £66,000.
Lots of jobs are also being dragged in to the minimum wage category, £20k per year. If you think about jobs like nurses and police officer, starting at circa 30k, it isn't much higher than minimum wage.
I don't think this is going to go well for the government, over time. Particularly not with 2% freezes in public sector pay rises.
Looking at the polls Sunak seems to be moving into if not beyond Truss numbers. As honeymoons go this one's giving John Reginald Christie a run for his money
The Roe/Wade supreme court verdict probably cost the Republicans control of the Senate. It's possible they'll fail to win control by 5,000 switchers and those will have been women annoyed by that decision.
Is there any evidence that this issue energises pro-choicers more than pro-lifers? Or that it energises more women than men? Dems seem to think it's a magic bullet but they'd be well-advised to have a few others, just in case. If toxic Trump leaves the scene one way or another their right flank is vulnerable to a younger, more presentable Republican.
The reversal of RvW is important. Not because it causes this or that particular outcome for voters, but because, as in the UK, it makes a genuinely difficult issue one for voters and legislators, not constitutions and courts.
When the USA sees that this should be true for gun laws, and realises the constitution doesn't say or mean what has been assumed about the two year old's right to have a machine gun for Christmas, then progress will be made.
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
The Roe/Wade supreme court verdict probably cost the Republicans control of the Senate. It's possible they'll fail to win control by 5,000 switchers and those will have been women annoyed by that decision.
What's really impressive is that at this moment the odds are they will go backwards. The last time a governing party made net gains in the Senate at midterms was 2002, and the last time the Dems did was in 1962.
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
The Labour Party isn't pro-Brexit, and never has been. It campaigned to remain, but lost. So Brexit has happened, against the Labour Party's wishes. Having lost, quite sensibly in order to win the next election, the Labour Party is seeking to make Brexit work much better than the Tories.
Rishi Sunak will announce a significant rise in the national living wage and give eight million households cost of living payments worth up to £1,100 as he prioritises support for the poorest over universal measures.
The Times has been told that the prime minister and Jeremy Hunt, his chancellor, will accept an official recommendation to increase the living wage from £9.50 an hour to about £10.40 an hour — a rise of nearly 10 per cent. The move will benefit 2.5 million people. One government source suggested that the increase could be even higher.
Sunak will also give those on means-tested benefits, such as universal credit, cost of living payments worth £650; disability benefit recipients £150; and pensioner households £300. The plans, which extend existing support, will result in some households benefiting from all three payments.
All households will, however, still face a significant rise in average energy bills as the government increases the energy price guarantee from an average of £2,500 to as much as £3,100 from April.
Even this approach will cost the government billions. The Times has been told that internal forecasts by Ofgem, the energy regulator, suggest that average bills would reach £4,006 in April without the energy price guarantee.
Whether it prospers or not is, however, up to us. That's the point of Brexit
It is not prospering
That is the fact of Brexit
If so, we need to fix that. And Brexit gives us the regulatory powers to do that
We probably have to be more adventurous. The EU market is gone for ever. That's a blow, but it can be a boon, in the end
We cut off our own leg.
That's a blow, but it can be a boon, in the end...
Yes good for hopping competitions
And a significant reduction in shoe wear.
I would have thought it would increase shoe wear as more pressure would go on that one shoe. Meanwhile, you still have to buy pairs of shoes.
There must be a market for single shoes. After all average human has just under 2 legs.
All you need to do is find someone with the same sized foot and the other foot missing. And similar taste in footwear.
I'm sure we can persuade Elon Musk to incorporate that data into an app.
Radio Cumbria used to run a service where ewes without lambs were matched with lambs without ewes. Happy days. I bet LBC or Times Radio hasn't thought of that one.
“[Lake] has emerged as a Republican phenom by amplifying Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen,” read the subhead of its even longer profile. Last week, Axios went several steps further and reported that top Democratic strategists now believe Lake has the “potential to soar to a vice presidential spot or a post-Trump presidential candidacy.”
PB-ers will no doubt be grateful that I pointed out all of this: several weeks before the actual American media.
I am sure PB-ers will show our gratitude for this priceless tip in the usual way….
No wonder Leondamus is leaving PB, what.three.words, Liz Truss will be an awesome PM, and now Kari Lake.
His departure will be a shame as PB loses its most important (anti-tipster) tool.
Still aliens and Dall-E though.
The whole nation awaits the next reincarnation with bated breath.
This one lasted quite awhile.
I'm puzzled. @Leon claims to have been one of the original posters on PB, yet he only joined in Dec 2020. Something doesn't add up...
#Scarfgate has just been raised by @RussellFindlay1 who sought clarification for the decision. Convener @JoeFitzSNP suspended the meeting to discuss "in private". Presumably, there are some things the public aren't allowed to know! #ThisIsMyNo
The Roe/Wade supreme court verdict probably cost the Republicans control of the Senate. It's possible they'll fail to win control by 5,000 switchers and those will have been women annoyed by that decision.
What's really impressive is that at this moment the odds are they will go backwards. The last time a governing party made net gains in the Senate at midterms was 2002, and the last time the Dems did was in 1962.
It's quite an achievement.
Rather its quite a failure by the GOP and with candidate selection playing a major part.
Did the GOP have a good candidate in any winnable seat ?
I don't expect many people to have sympathy (because it's a high salary) but I moved firms at the end of 2021 and jumped from a salary of £92k to £135k, as i took a promotion as a director. It's taken me nearly 20 years of work to get there.
I honestly wonder why I bothered. The job is stressful, dealing with lots of people and client issues, bids and complex delivery issues, and I've lost all my personal allowance, all help with childcare, and am shortly to be taxed at top 45p rate. The extra rewards just aren't worth it.
It would probably be easier and simpler for me to take a job as a senior/experienced project manager at 85-90k with less stress. R perhaps find a way to go contract with my own company. Because it's otherwise just not worth it.
Yes, cry me a river but when people ask how tax affects choices and incentives, this is what they mean. Not sure I can bothered.
Yes, those are the considerations to weigh up when working out how ambitious you really want to be. Similar considerations for people considering becoming active in national politics, plus the publicity and scrutiny.
The tax issues are incidental, though, aren't they? It's not really about a few £ of tax or whether someone on a six figure salary should get state-funded help with their childcare, when so many other folk can't afford food and fuel.
It's not incidental- it all adds up. And that ends up affecting the value calculation.
It's probably a £6-8k tax hit over the baseline (depending on how you account for childcare vouchers) of what I could have expected with a similar role in 2008.
That's significant.
Of course it would be incidental if I was on 200k or 300k as the salary is so high that it doesn't really matter (nor change for tax rules) but lots of GPs, consultants, very senior teachers and directors are going to fall into this at the pinnacle of their careers in their 40s and 50s and even more as fiscal drag continues.
No such thing as a free lunch. We've got to stop taxing people to death who work hard and our economy relies upon and go after capital instead.
I bet you that this hypothetical person on £200-300k would say the same as you. I also bet that the people unable to afford their food and heating bills would say that the extra tax shouldn't matter for you!
Meanwhile, I note that today's data shows that private sector pay rises are running at 6.6%, with public sector rises at 2.2%. Both of course are below inflation, but there's no doubt that public sector workers are bearing the brunt of the current cost of living crisis.
Of course there are lots of well-paid public sector workers who can withstand this. But millions of public sector workers are on low wages. It's hardly surprising that they're getting a bit bolshie, when their supermarket shop and other basic bills are rising by 10% or more.
I don't expect many people to have sympathy (because it's a high salary) but I moved firms at the end of 2021 and jumped from a salary of £92k to £135k, as i took a promotion as a director. It's taken me nearly 20 years of work to get there.
I honestly wonder why I bothered. The job is stressful, dealing with lots of people and client issues, bids and complex delivery issues, and I've lost all my personal allowance, all help with childcare, and am shortly to be taxed at top 45p rate. The extra rewards just aren't worth it.
It would probably be easier and simpler for me to take a job as a senior/experienced project manager at 85-90k with less stress. R perhaps find a way to go contract with my own company. Because it's otherwise just not worth it.
Yes, cry me a river but when people ask how tax affects choices and incentives, this is what they mean. Not sure I can bothered.
You're still (relatively) young. How much opportunity is there for further upwards promotion, for more money? If you're near the top of the org then it's probably not worth it - unless the experience will help you get a better-compensated job elsewhere.
As someone who is in favour of higher taxation on high incomes to support good public services, I do think that high taxes which are irrational and inconsistent are just irritating. Sunak could get himself some goodwill by sorting out the nonsense of 60% tax in £100k-£125K and 40-45% thereafter (because of the withdrawal of personal allowance). 40% at £100K rising gradually to 50% at £150K would probably raise more money while actually annoying high-earners less.
I would say, though, that if one dislikes a job one shouldn't do it if not desperate. There are people out there who like being director-level and perhaps make better decisions than folk who really wish they were doing something else.
Lolz at Rishi Sunak trying to make a positive headline out of confirming eight Type 26, City-class frigates will be built: 1) That's always been the case 2) Those eight are replacing, um, THIRTEEN, Type 23, Duke-class frigates ...Embarrassingly, Def Sec Ben Wallace had to admit last week the first vessel is already a year behind schedule and that delay will cost us £233m https://mobile.twitter.com/benglaze/status/1592400418763845632
Might as well tack on several extra years and billions on every estimate, to stop being surprised.
Many years back when I worked in an oil company, we had a fairly serious ship design/analysis dept. They worked with the actual ship builders to make sure the ships actually worked.
One ex-RN naval architect advocated building a combined ASW/AA ship for the RN. The resulting ship would be bigger and might have nominal
Comments
I partly blame the useless Vanilla system. The next successful iteration of the Conservative Party will be pro-European.
And it won’t be “Unionist”, as the Union will be history.
Of course, if someone's calories were mainly from chicken and potatoes, instead of beef and rice, then the push bike almost certainly wins out over the e-bike. It would be interesting to see how the e-bike compares to a car though.
As we move to zero carbon electricity, we need to stop thinking about the carbon cost of electricity as there won't be any.
Arizonans know BS when they see it.
https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1592358184207151106
E-bikes don't replace push bikes; they replace no-bikes.
That's a more useful attribute because it's evident even when not visible.
An end to the sterile debates of wind or nuclear, tidal or solar. Lots of all of it.
With a large, clean, energy surplus lots of good things will become possible.
One reason so many people contract is that it allows them to escape a large amount of the corporate bullshit and just focus on the work they enjoy
Edit - it's also why so many management roles are now impossible to fill - why do xyz for £5,000 more when it's really just £200 a month extra cash.
So add in the energy usage of a shower?
https://twitter.com/joannaccherry/status/1592435573754499074
Karon Monaghan KC is the barrister John Nicholson MP SNP snarked as “relatively competent” after she eviscerated his pompous arse on the witness stand….
Lab 63%
Con 20%
LD 8%
Ref 4%
UKIP 4%
Grn 1%
Rest of South
Lab 47%
Con 32%
LD 9%
Grn 8%
Ref 3%
UKIP 2%
Midlands
Lab 61%
Con 25%
Ref 5%
UKIP 4%
Grn 2%
LD 2%
North
Lab 56%
Con 26%
Grn 7%
LD 5%
Ref 3%
UKIP 2%
Scotland
SNP 53%
Con 18%
Lab 17%
Grn 11%
Ref 1%
Wales
Lab 42%
Con 31%
PC 20%
LD 6%
(Deltapoll; Sample Size: 1,060; Fieldwork 10-14 November)
I know people who've spent more than they could on a car then started ragging it as soon as they've got it.
Mind you, on showers, I don't shower before cycling on commute days, so I just displace a shower from home to work.
A woman sitting quietly in the row behind me at the @SP_EHRCJStage 2 hearing on the GRR Bill wearing a purple, white and green knitted scarf, has just been asked to take it off or leave the hearing. She has left.
https://twitter.com/LucyHunterB/status/1592447079645077504
But MSPs wearing rainbow lanyards is absolutely fine….
Who says that PB got boring?
And have we heard from SSI ?
I notice that WA3 seems to be the worst GOP House defeat and down to a Trump impeacher being primaryed by a MAGAster.
Makes me wonder what political statements I might be inadvertently making each day due to throwing things together from my wardrobe
Ebikes produce a fraction of the CO2 emissions of cars.
They are also fun to cycle, produce less of other types of pollution (including noise pollution), you get a bit of exercise, you don't have range anxiety, you don't need any special charging infrasctructure, cause less congestion, much smaller footprint to manufacture, etc.
I read somewhere that those e-scooters that are everywhere now are not very environmentally friendly for a whole bunch of reasons.
ETA: I commute twice a week, so I cut my shower time by 23% in each shower to compensate. So it's all good
So women's colours are verboten now in Sturgeon's Scottish Parliament, while rainbow is perfectly acceptable?
Ridiculous. Rainbow of course should be acceptable, but so too should women's colours. And if one is banned, both should be. Cherrypicking one isn't how a Parliament with free expression for all is supposed to work in a free society.
* National living wage to rise by 10% to £10.40
* 8m households will get cost-of-living payments worth up to £1,100 to help with bills
* But average energy bills will still rise by a quarter to more than £3,000…
Sunak strategy is to target support at those who need it most
But Resolution Foundation points out that there is a huge 'cliff edge' - if you earn £1 too much and are not on benefits you miss out on govt cost of living payments
2.3m of Britain's poorest do not claim benefits
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1592459941813530624
https://twitter.com/HJoyceGender/status/1592460777826701313
Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.
https://twitter.com/BenZaranko/status/1592424843173330944
I'm sure we can persuade Elon Musk to incorporate that data into an app.
https://twitter.com/cthomasippr/status/1592447984939466754
(social care was the one that came to my mind, but the others are good points, too)
https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1592152130433216512?s=46&t=Dxx36GTWKVGx7_1ZXvapvw
And the Labour Party is pro-Brexit. Madness.
As I suspect almost all government and most private spending is in the UK.
Perhaps energy efficiency is one area which isn't but how many others are there ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbnkY1tBvMU
Which would be considerably more economically damaging.
Is that madness too?
Plus the media shouldn't waste time asking why the pollsters and pundits got things wrong (this bit was a waste of time from Luntz).
Meanwhile, by this time tomorrow Trump will have formally announced his candidacy.
And the other involves Nigel Farage.
"It was language, it was tone, he would be very curt with people. He did this in front of a lot of other people. I think people felt demeaned. I tried to have that conversation with him." @TimesRadio
Presenter @MattChorley asks: "So having raised it with him, you then raised it informally with the proprietary and ethics team at the Cabinet Office?"
Simon McDonald: "That's true".
He adds that he wasn't aware of any formal complaints.
McDonald says existing bullying complaints system is "not fit for purpose".
"Action is only taken if there's a formal complaint & there's a feeling in the system that it's stacked in favour of the minister or senior official. So people hesitate to make a formal complaint.."
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1592466826440871936
Now his former Environment Secretary admits it was "not actually a very good deal... The truth is the UK gave away far too much for far too little in return."
https://twitter.com/adambienkov/status/1592240698493132800?s=46&t=Dxx36GTWKVGx7_1ZXvapvw
During the 1980s as British Leyland staggered to its doom, other car companies setup factories to make cars. Often, they employed people in both workforce and management from the old car companies. Yet they managed to build high quality cars, cheaply and with little industrial strife. While strike ridden BL failed at all of this.
Organisations and systems are important.
Will Wallace walk?
It's quite an achievement.
Given that he won't have figures 2022-23 he would be using 2021-22 which includes Track and Trace as NHS spending.
He knows 3% isn't happening.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/nov/10/ben-wallace-steps-back-liz-truss-defence-spending-target
Our geographical advantage is that we are a set of islands. That protects us from turmoil in Europe, unless of course we invite it in.
We have vast home grown resources. How we have captured and deployed those resources up until now, and how we might do so in the future, are two different things. We have plentiful water, fertile agricultural land, good fish stocks, oil, gas and coal, and plenty of renewable options like offshore wind and tidal. That's more than almost any other European nation can boast.
Your attempt to deny all this and your final sign off are incoherent and sound a bit manic frankly. I am concerned about your state of mind, and surprised that so many of your co-believers have chosen to endorse your post rather than kindly suggest to you to take a break.
The reality is that most other wages have gone up at anywhere near the same rate. The public sector job I was doing in 2012 was paid at about £39,000. It is now advertised for about £45,000. If it went up at the same pace as the minimum wage it should be £66,000.
Lots of jobs are also being dragged in to the minimum wage category, £20k per year. If you think about jobs like nurses and police officer, starting at circa 30k, it isn't much higher than minimum wage.
I don't think this is going to go well for the government, over time. Particularly not with 2% freezes in public sector pay rises.
When the USA sees that this should be true for gun laws, and realises the constitution doesn't say or mean what has been assumed about the two year old's right to have a machine gun for Christmas, then progress will be made.
Test and Trace was not a small amount of money.
Councils have little wiggle room, the party colours don't make a great deal of difference.
https://twitter.com/ForWomenScot/status/1592470652799569920
Did the GOP have a good candidate in any winnable seat ?
Of course there are lots of well-paid public sector workers who can withstand this. But millions of public sector workers are on low wages. It's hardly surprising that they're getting a bit bolshie, when their supermarket shop and other basic bills are rising by 10% or more.
I would say, though, that if one dislikes a job one shouldn't do it if not desperate. There are people out there who like being director-level and perhaps make better decisions than folk who really wish they were doing something else.
One ex-RN naval architect advocated building a combined ASW/AA ship for the RN. The resulting ship would be bigger and might have nominal Well, apparently he has been hospitalised already for heart issues. Maybe Rishi sent him a care package of aftershave and sushi?