@DavidHerdson: There's a very large political market now which will view positively closer relations with the EU.
While I understand Labour not wanting to reopen that can of worms too enthusiastically, when the cost-of-living should be centre stage, the two are linked.
As I said earlier, I can easily see Starmer selling membership of the CU/SM on the back of these horrendous predictions
He can say Freedom of Movement won't be an issue because everyone will be emigrating rather than immigrating
Given we are one of the most densely populated nations in the world a bit of net emigration may not necessarily be a bad thing in terms of reducing pressure on public services and for housing
But it will be the rich emigrating. The higher rate taxpayers. And the young and the educated
We are comprehensively shagged, and the Tories did it. Lockdowns 2 and 3 were catastrophically stupid and have bankrupted us
You can say Labour would have been worse - they wanted even longer lockdowns - but it is irrelevant. The Tories own this. I can foresee them going extinct
Look at all the places that are experiencing mass emigration. Rural France, most of Spain, the small towns of the Red Wall. More exotic ones that celebrity flintknappers get paid to visit.
They're dismal and lifeless, because the people who go are the people with life. And then the towns die. We really don't want emigration.
But given that the country has been run as a preservationist theme park with a banking sector to pay the bills, it's going to be hard to avoid.
Yes, the UK is basically an enormous Health System funded by financial services
It's not even a particularly good Health System, and now the funds are drying up
I have never been so pessimistic for the future of the UK. I don't know how we fix this, I cannot see any politicians with any ideas. Labour are as clueless as the Tories
I'm thinking of renting a dinghy and heading for Albania, I hear prospects are better there
Maybe you should go have a quiet reflection and consider whether each of the votes you have cast over the past decade have helped make things worse.
I voted for Brexit and would do it again (all else being equal), I voted for Boris because he would get Brexit done, and TMay because the alternative was Corbyn, Etc etc
As I say below, I don't think Brexit is seriously significant in our present travails. This is the result of 20 years of steadily worsening economic management, reliance on too much immigration, then the global shocks of Covid and the War, and so on
However Remoaners like you should be cheerful. Despite the above I am pretty sure many voters WILL associate all this with Brexit, and blame Brexit (the Remainer media will make sure this happens) and there will be a surge of support for SM/CU and maybe even Rejoin. So you might get your wish
If I was in Qatar, for the first time in my life, as a good Muslim boy I'd be tempted to have a beer.
Only three days before kick-off, the Qatari hosts were putting pressure on Fifa to perform a complete U-turn on the beer policy at the World Cup and stop selling Budweiser at the eight World Cup stadiums altogether.
Budweiser is one of Fifa’s biggest sponsors. It remains unclear whether football fans will be allowed to buy any beer at the games. If Budweiser is not allowed either to sell beer or to have any visibility at the games, then Fifa will be in breach of a multi-million dollar contract.
At present, the only place that it is certain that beer will be available to all football fans is in the Doha fan parks.
Considerable pressure has come to bear on Fifa from the Qatar 2022 organisers about the availability of beer at the stadiums. It is understood that this has come at the insistence of the Qatari royal family.
Fifa has already made one concession this week to Qatar 2022 on the availability of Budweiser at the stadiums. Qatar 2022 insisted that the Budweiser concession stands were too obtrusive and had them moved into positions where they would receive less visibility.
It is highly unusual for changes like this to be made to an agreement with a sponsor so close to the start of a big event. However, it now appears that Qatar 2022 wishes to push even further.
Fifa has been very firm in the past on making sure hosts have to permit this sort of thing regardless of the regular local laws.
I also seem to recall they've pushed in the past for very quick, harsh justice for anyone causing a problem during a tournament, which is probably less of an imposition.
FIFA were "very firm" that World Cup 2022 should be held in the Northern hemisphere summer, then they weren't.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
Any potential employer reading your posts on here would nevertheless be forced to concede that you’ve truly given it your best shot.
The energy supplier had around 1.6 million customers when it collapsed a year ago.
Can someone explain how this breaks down? £6.5b for 1.6m customers implies that a business that buys energy wholesale and sells to consumers managed to lose more than £4,000 per customer.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
All economies are much like that though - building a frail pyramid. If you ask yourself the question as to where wealth comes from you'll have no trouble seeing this.
@DavidHerdson: There's a very large political market now which will view positively closer relations with the EU.
While I understand Labour not wanting to reopen that can of worms too enthusiastically, when the cost-of-living should be centre stage, the two are linked.
As I said earlier, I can easily see Starmer selling membership of the CU/SM on the back of these horrendous predictions
He can say Freedom of Movement won't be an issue because everyone will be emigrating rather than immigrating
Given we are one of the most densely populated nations in the world a bit of net emigration may not necessarily be a bad thing in terms of reducing pressure on public services and for housing
But it will be the rich emigrating. The higher rate taxpayers. And the young and the educated
We are comprehensively shagged, and the Tories did it. Lockdowns 2 and 3 were catastrophically stupid and have bankrupted us
You can say Labour would have been worse - they wanted even longer lockdowns - but it is irrelevant. The Tories own this. I can foresee them going extinct
Look at all the places that are experiencing mass emigration. Rural France, most of Spain, the small towns of the Red Wall. More exotic ones that celebrity flintknappers get paid to visit.
They're dismal and lifeless, because the people who go are the people with life. And then the towns die. We really don't want emigration.
But given that the country has been run as a preservationist theme park with a banking sector to pay the bills, it's going to be hard to avoid.
Yes, the UK is basically an enormous Health System funded by financial services
It's not even a particularly good Health System, and now the funds are drying up
I have never been so pessimistic for the future of the UK. I don't know how we fix this, I cannot see any politicians with any ideas. Labour are as clueless as the Tories
I'm thinking of renting a dinghy and heading for Albania, I hear prospects are better there
Maybe you should go have a quiet reflection and consider whether each of the votes you have cast over the past decade have helped make things worse.
I voted for Brexit and would do it again (all else being equal), I voted for Boris because he would get Brexit done, and TMay because the alternative was Corbyn, Etc etc
As I say below, I don't think Brexit is seriously significant in our present travails. This is the result of 20 years of steadily worsening economic management, reliance on too much immigration, then the global shocks of Covid and the War, and so on
However Remoaners like you should be cheerful. Despite the above I am pretty sure many voters WILL associate all this with Brexit, and blame Brexit (the Remainer media will make sure this happens) and there will be a surge of support for SM/CU and maybe even Rejoin. So you might get your wish
@DavidHerdson: There's a very large political market now which will view positively closer relations with the EU.
While I understand Labour not wanting to reopen that can of worms too enthusiastically, when the cost-of-living should be centre stage, the two are linked.
As I said earlier, I can easily see Starmer selling membership of the CU/SM on the back of these horrendous predictions
He can say Freedom of Movement won't be an issue because everyone will be emigrating rather than immigrating
Given we are one of the most densely populated nations in the world a bit of net emigration may not necessarily be a bad thing in terms of reducing pressure on public services and for housing
Unfortunately the people most likely to emigrate are the young - the people we need to help support & care for an ageing population.
Not just the young but the successful and those with a dream
Again @HYUFD welcoming emigration from the UK misjudges just who they would be and the loss to the UK
There will always be young and successful people who want to come to London, including from around the world. Though we do need to ensure the top tax rate doesn't rise too high yes so that it puts them off and leads to a brain drain like the 1970s
You were welcoming emigration not immigration
Some emigration given how densely populated we are and demand for housing, public services etc yes no bad thing
You have not understood that the ones likely to emigrate are those we really need to stay
I have already said I would not raise tax on the highest earners too high to keep most of the highest skilled but some under 35s deciding to emigrate given they are the ones most demanding new housing, especially in London and the Home Counties, is no bad thing. Plenty more room for them in Canada or Australia for example as your family has discovered
My son and his partner emigrated to New Zealand in 2003 and both were a loss to our economy
Their relationship broke up as a consequence of aftermath of the Christchurch 2011 earthquake and in 2015 he married a Canadian and they live in Vancouver and will not be returning to the UK
This has nothing to do with countries having plenty of room
The energy supplier had around 1.6 million customers when it collapsed a year ago.
Can someone explain how this breaks down? £6.5b for 1.6m customers implies that a business that buys energy wholesale and sells to consumers managed to lose more than £4,000 per customer.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
And yet it still isn't being done. The truth is that social care as a profession is not something that just any untrained and demotivated oik can do, and it's enormously undervalued (and underpaid accordingly.) Hence the fact that there aren't enough takers for it.
The remaining unemployed of the nation, in the broadest sense, consist of people over about 55 who are basically sick to death of working, and are getting by on sources of income other than their own wages until they become eligible for the state pension (savings, early drawdown of private pensions, income from a partner still in work, and so on,) some people who are between jobs but are actively looking (virtually all of whom will expect something with more social hours and better pay, e.g. shelf stacking in Lidl,) people who are plain workshy, and those for whom finding suitable employment is very hard (because they have chronic illnesses, a lot of caring responsibilities, significant disabilities, or learning or behavioural problems.)
Basically, it's no use getting the DWP to try to force unsuitable people into taking on these important and responsible roles within society by threatening them with benefit sanctions. You want a sufficient number of quality carers, you need to tempt suitable candidates out of early retirement or out of other occupations with lots of money; or you import a lot of appropriate workers from low income countries, who might still be prepared to slog away for the pittance that care work currently pays in Britain; or some combination of the two. So, what's it to be?
57% of 2019 Conservative voters intending to support the party again with 18% now voting Labour. The overall swing is 17.5% from Conservative to Labour. 65% of LD and 55% of Labour voters willing to vote tactically.
The latest R&W overall poll (published today) - LAB 48, CON 27, LD 10 produces a 224 Labour majority on UNS on the new boundaries but that goes up to 334 with tactical voting.
All this may be rendered moot by the public acclaim today's Budget will no doubt achieve - doubtless there are PB members whose phones have been inundated by messages from complete strangers hailing Hunt's proposals a triumph and how they will never doubt the Tories again.
Back in the real world, the one area which still seems very uncertain is funding for local authorities. I'm sure plenty of councils of all stripes and none (and worth bearing in mind a lot of English councils will be going to the polls next May) will be happy to blame the Government for the 5% Council Tax rise (still below inflation) and whether today's pronouncements will mitigate the risk of widespread section 114 notices remains to be seen.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
And yet it still isn't being done. The truth is that social care as a profession is not something that just any untrained and demotivated oik can do, and it's enormously undervalued (and underpaid accordingly.) Hence the fact that there aren't enough takers for it.
The remaining unemployed of the nation, in the broadest sense, consist of people over about 55 who are basically sick to death of working, and are getting by on sources of income other than their own wages until they become eligible for the state pension (savings, early drawdown of private pensions, income from a partner still in work, and so on,) some people who are between jobs but are actively looking (virtually all of whom will expect something with more social hours and better pay, e.g. shelf stacking in Lidl,) people who are plain workshy, and those for whom finding suitable employment is very hard (because they have chronic illnesses, a lot of caring responsibilities, significant disabilities, or learning or behavioural problems.)
Basically, it's no use getting the DWP to try to force unsuitable people into taking on these important and responsible roles within society by threatening them with benefit sanctions. You want a sufficient number of quality carers, you need to tempt suitable candidates out of early retirement or out of other occupations with lots of money; or you import a lot of appropriate workers from low income countries, who might still be prepared to slog away for the pittance that care work currently pays in Britain; or some combination of the two. So, what's it to be?
It's also the case that a lot of jobs in social care still involve heavy lifting, long vigils at night, and other things that are probably more suited to average school-leavers than over-55s.
I remember that campaign. If I recall correctly it was at the dawn of the internet. I had no idea what the adverts were about, or for. Nowadays I’d Google it and know in seconds. Progress, I guess.
Did Tugendhat really stand to become the PM knowing that he was about to be hit with a driving ban? *brave*.
Especially as the reason for the election was law breaking in #10.
Still pisses me off that you can get points/bans/fine for holding a phone whilst driving but it is fine if you drive holding a lit cigarette.
You don't look at the cigarette, do you?
The number of drivers on their phone is just mad. It's worse than being drunk for being in a collision.
People creeping through traffic are the worse - unlikely to see a kid running across or a bike filtering through until it's too late.
With bluetooth I never touch my phone whilst driving but a few years ago I was nearly knocked by a woman who lighting her cigarette whilst driving.
As part off your driving test they should require you to negotiate a roundabout whilst searching in the glove compartment for a sweet and conducting a full-on row with your spouse on a dodgy cell-phone.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
If I was in Qatar, for the first time in my life, as a good Muslim boy I'd be tempted to have a beer.
Only three days before kick-off, the Qatari hosts were putting pressure on Fifa to perform a complete U-turn on the beer policy at the World Cup and stop selling Budweiser at the eight World Cup stadiums altogether.
Budweiser is one of Fifa’s biggest sponsors. It remains unclear whether football fans will be allowed to buy any beer at the games. If Budweiser is not allowed either to sell beer or to have any visibility at the games, then Fifa will be in breach of a multi-million dollar contract.
At present, the only place that it is certain that beer will be available to all football fans is in the Doha fan parks.
Considerable pressure has come to bear on Fifa from the Qatar 2022 organisers about the availability of beer at the stadiums. It is understood that this has come at the insistence of the Qatari royal family.
Fifa has already made one concession this week to Qatar 2022 on the availability of Budweiser at the stadiums. Qatar 2022 insisted that the Budweiser concession stands were too obtrusive and had them moved into positions where they would receive less visibility.
It is highly unusual for changes like this to be made to an agreement with a sponsor so close to the start of a big event. However, it now appears that Qatar 2022 wishes to push even further.
Fifa has been very firm in the past on making sure hosts have to permit this sort of thing regardless of the regular local laws.
I also seem to recall they've pushed in the past for very quick, harsh justice for anyone causing a problem during a tournament, which is probably less of an imposition.
FIFA were "very firm" that World Cup 2022 should be held in the Northern hemisphere summer, then they weren't.
Yes, but being firm on selling beer is about money. They care more about that.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
All economies are much like that though - building a frail pyramid. If you ask yourself the question as to where wealth comes from you'll have no trouble seeing this.
It seems to me that wealth comes from having a skilled, energetic population who are motivated to work hard and save for the future because they believe it's worth it. Not sure if the UK ticks any of these boxes. Brexit hasn't helped but the writing was already on the wall. Tinkering with marginal tax rates doesn't help much either. We sit on our arses watching TV, expecting the government to do it all for us. And then vote them out when they fail - over and over again. And while doing so we pride ourselves on living in a healthy democracy because we can sack the government if it displeases us.
The polling over the next days over the Budget's 'fairness' will be extremely important. If the overall verdict is positive (notwithstanding the hits to pockets), then that is a necessary but far from sufficient condition for the Tories to stage some sort of electoral recovery over the next two years.
But if the Statement gets the thumbs-down, then there really isn't much hope.
I predict it will get the thumbs down because the Tories are already extremely unpopular so anything they do will be tarred with the same brush. Whether it will be any good is a separate question.
I predict many on low wage and on benefits will very much like tge extra money from living wage and benefit increases, coupled with pensioners happy at 10% pension uplift too, so Tory’s WILL rise in coming polls. Reform might rise at same time, for those on right seething at further tax increase, fuel rises, in place of cuts, to create what is being called highest tax take ever in British history (roll over and go home socialist governments of sixties and seventies - Hunt and Sunak are giving you one hell of a beating).
Cut out and keep - Opniums Saturday poll will have Tories 31%+
Wether the voters getting £600 hand outs for 10% benefit and pensions increase should love a government for simply choosing not to give them less than inflation, probably shows low expectations were going into this budget after recent months.
But workers not getting 10% pay rises, anyone just above thresholds of UC support, perhaps on income 25-35k, who are still utterly struggling but not getting the extra support they see others getting, why would they love this budget?
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
As long as they are not a convicted dangerous criminal (who should probably still be in prison anyway) why not? Getting a job with some basic responsibility but not high skills needed might help them become less surly and more employable in the future.
I would have no problem being looked after by someone formerly long term unemployed no
I'm disappointed that HS2 NE is still deleted, and that the Housing Market is left unreformed.
A lot of fiscal drag. Good to see some reform of top rate taxes. Hopefully the £100-£125k marginal rate will be next.
I did not hear anything on defence spending. Aha - I see 2% GDP will be maintained. That may be code for an effective reduction, depending how it is counted.
I wonder if a typical energy bill will be anywhere near pro-rata £3000 by the time we get to April.
Brave, but sensible, to go for a revaluation for business rates. A time bomb? Last time it was like stuck pigs squealing to heaven for those not paying wrt their disproportionate property price increases.
Sensible to raise Min Wage (I think to the highest net in Western Europe), and benefits / basic pensions by inflation rate.
Local Council finances look to be under threat. I missed whether these would be restricted to +5% on Council Tax this year. Those are also crying out for a re-valuation or reform.
To me (others will differ) Reeves' speech was a vacuum - about 95% pre-recorded rhetoric.
Big suspicion is, what good news there is got announced in speech, first impressions matter so they are shaping the first impressions. More controversial things like the Defence Budget cut you flagged, hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly.
On Topic. And as we were saying “what good news there is got announced in speech, controversial things hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly”
And so it begins
This was in the March Budget too (it's a bigger increase now because it's linked to RPI which is higher than previously forecast but it's not a change in policy, it was in there already).
About time too. There are finite amounts of fossil fuels in the ground, and burning them is destroying our environment, so anything that will dissuade their use and encourage the use of cleaner alternatives is to be commended. And it brings in a few bob too.
You're thinking too short term. Coal, oil and gas are - so long as the sun keeps shining - all renewable sources.
I don't think that's right. I think all the fossil fuel deposits were laid down before the more recent evolution of fungi and bacteria that would now break down organic deposits before they could be converted to fossil fuels.
Fascinating.
That had never occurred to me.
Surprised me at first too, but then, when I thought about it, I realised that the energy stored in fossil fuels is available to any organism that can evolve to access it from the organic matter before it becomes fossil fuels, and then it makes a lot more sense.
From that point of view the existence of fossil fuels at all is a fortuitous accident that provided a cheap energy source for our technological development.
@DavidHerdson: There's a very large political market now which will view positively closer relations with the EU.
While I understand Labour not wanting to reopen that can of worms too enthusiastically, when the cost-of-living should be centre stage, the two are linked.
As I said earlier, I can easily see Starmer selling membership of the CU/SM on the back of these horrendous predictions
He can say Freedom of Movement won't be an issue because everyone will be emigrating rather than immigrating
Given we are one of the most densely populated nations in the world a bit of net emigration may not necessarily be a bad thing in terms of reducing pressure on public services and for housing
Unfortunately the people most likely to emigrate are the young - the people we need to help support & care for an ageing population.
Not just the young but the successful and those with a dream
Again @HYUFD welcoming emigration from the UK misjudges just who they would be and the loss to the UK
There will always be young and successful people who want to come to London, including from around the world. Though we do need to ensure the top tax rate doesn't rise too high yes so that it puts them off and leads to a brain drain like the 1970s
You were welcoming emigration not immigration
Some emigration given how densely populated we are and demand for housing, public services etc yes no bad thing
You have not understood that the ones likely to emigrate are those we really need to stay
I have already said I would not raise tax on the highest earners too high to keep most of the highest skilled but some under 35s deciding to emigrate given they are the ones most demanding new housing, especially in London and the Home Counties, is no bad thing. Plenty more room for them in Canada or Australia for example as your family has discovered
My son and his partner emigrated to New Zealand in 2003 and both were a loss to our economy
Their relationship broke up as a consequence of aftermath of the Christchurch 2011 earthquake and in 2015 he married a Canadian and they live in Vancouver and will not be returning to the UK
This has nothing to do with countries having plenty of room
It does in part as both Canada and New Zealand have far lower population density than we do
The energy supplier had around 1.6 million customers when it collapsed a year ago.
Can someone explain how this breaks down? £6.5b for 1.6m customers implies that a business that buys energy wholesale and sells to consumers managed to lose more than £4,000 per customer.
Energy firms selling that much energy essentially without having paid for it up front, need to have capital requirements lodged with OFGEM instead, just like banks do with their regulators. It is blatantly obvious that the state should not let relatively small companies take one way price trading bets backed by the taxpayer, but no one is interested.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
Believe me, I have seen social care workers in action at very close quarters and the idea that it is a non skilled job that anyone on the dole with a couple of day's training can just drop into is an utter fantasy.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
Believe me, I have seen social care workers in action at very close quarters and the idea that it is a non skilled job that anyone on the dole with a couple of day's training can just drop into is an utter fantasy.
I'm disappointed that HS2 NE is still deleted, and that the Housing Market is left unreformed.
A lot of fiscal drag. Good to see some reform of top rate taxes. Hopefully the £100-£125k marginal rate will be next.
I did not hear anything on defence spending. Aha - I see 2% GDP will be maintained. That may be code for an effective reduction, depending how it is counted.
I wonder if a typical energy bill will be anywhere near pro-rata £3000 by the time we get to April.
Brave, but sensible, to go for a revaluation for business rates. A time bomb? Last time it was like stuck pigs squealing to heaven for those not paying wrt their disproportionate property price increases.
Sensible to raise Min Wage (I think to the highest net in Western Europe), and benefits / basic pensions by inflation rate.
Local Council finances look to be under threat. I missed whether these would be restricted to +5% on Council Tax this year. Those are also crying out for a re-valuation or reform.
To me (others will differ) Reeves' speech was a vacuum - about 95% pre-recorded rhetoric.
Big suspicion is, what good news there is got announced in speech, first impressions matter so they are shaping the first impressions. More controversial things like the Defence Budget cut you flagged, hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly.
On Topic. And as we were saying “what good news there is got announced in speech, controversial things hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly”
And so it begins
This was in the March Budget too (it's a bigger increase now because it's linked to RPI which is higher than previously forecast but it's not a change in policy, it was in there already).
About time too. There are finite amounts of fossil fuels in the ground, and burning them is destroying our environment, so anything that will dissuade their use and encourage the use of cleaner alternatives is to be commended. And it brings in a few bob too.
You're thinking too short term. Coal, oil and gas are - so long as the sun keeps shining - all renewable sources.
I don't think that's right. I think all the fossil fuel deposits were laid down before the more recent evolution of fungi and bacteria that would now break down organic deposits before they could be converted to fossil fuels.
Fascinating.
That had never occurred to me.
Surprised me at first too, but then, when I thought about it, I realised that the energy stored in fossil fuels is available to any organism that can evolve to access it from the organic matter before it becomes fossil fuels, and then it makes a lot more sense.
From that point of view the existence of fossil fuels at all is a fortuitous accident that provided a cheap energy source for our technological development.
So, had the fungi and bacteria been around at the time - and chewed through all the organic matter - what would the effect have been on the climate?
Would it have been the same as if we were to now burn all the fossil fuels in existence? (Theoretically, obviously. I assume only a tiny fraction of the earths fossil fuels have been/could be profitably extracted and burned)
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
Believe me, I have seen social care workers in action at very close quarters and the idea that it is a non skilled job that anyone on the dole with a couple of day's training can just drop into is an utter fantasy.
Well it certainly isn't a very high skilled job isn't it, you don't need a degree for it or even a vocational qualification beyond that you can learn on the job and we certainly don't need to import all those who do basic social care work from abroad when plenty of those at home can do it
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
As long as they are not a convicted dangerous criminal (who should probably still be in prison anyway) why not? Getting a job with some basic responsibility but not high skills needed might help them become less surly and more employable in the future.
I would have no problem being looked after by someone formerly long term unemployed no
Nice dodge. We're not talking about someone merely long term unemployed, we were specifically talking about those right on the boundary of unemployable - given we have such low unemployment many of those remaining either don't want to work, or there are reasons they may find it hard to work where there are available jobs.
You seem to think caring is easy. But 'unskilled' jobs are not actually unskilled, and not everyone can do anything. Some people for instance might not be suited to basic admin jobs as office work drives them up the wall. Likewise, some people might physically be able to care for someone but lack the judgement or attitude to do so properly.
You cannot expect anyone to want to do it, or be suitable even if they do. So you cannot just assume those still unemployed could all do so.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
As long as they are not a convicted dangerous criminal (who should probably still be in prison anyway) why not? Getting a job with some basic responsibility but not high skills needed might help them become less surly and more employable in the future.
I would have no problem being looked after by someone formerly long term unemployed no
Nice dodge. We're not talking about someone merely long term unemployed, we were specifically talking about those right on the boundary of unemployable - given we have such low unemployment many of those remaining either don't want to work, or there are reasons they may find it hard to work where there are available jobs.
You seem to think caring is easy. But 'unskilled' jobs are not actually unskilled, and not everyone can do anything. Some people for instance might not be suited to basic admin jobs as office work drives them up the wall. Likewise, some people might physically be able to care for someone but lack the judgement or attitude to do so properly.
You cannot expect anyone to want to do it, or be suitable even if they do. So you cannot just assume those still unemployed could all do so.
You can, as if they don't apply for it they get a benefits sanction.
If you don't have very high qualifications and don't want to do basic work tough, the taxpayer doesn't have to pay for everlasting UC and benefits for you either if you refuse to apply for even basic work
@DavidHerdson: There's a very large political market now which will view positively closer relations with the EU.
While I understand Labour not wanting to reopen that can of worms too enthusiastically, when the cost-of-living should be centre stage, the two are linked.
As I said earlier, I can easily see Starmer selling membership of the CU/SM on the back of these horrendous predictions
He can say Freedom of Movement won't be an issue because everyone will be emigrating rather than immigrating
Given we are one of the most densely populated nations in the world a bit of net emigration may not necessarily be a bad thing in terms of reducing pressure on public services and for housing
Unfortunately the people most likely to emigrate are the young - the people we need to help support & care for an ageing population.
Not just the young but the successful and those with a dream
Again @HYUFD welcoming emigration from the UK misjudges just who they would be and the loss to the UK
There will always be young and successful people who want to come to London, including from around the world. Though we do need to ensure the top tax rate doesn't rise too high yes so that it puts them off and leads to a brain drain like the 1970s
You were welcoming emigration not immigration
Some emigration given how densely populated we are and demand for housing, public services etc yes no bad thing
You have not understood that the ones likely to emigrate are those we really need to stay
I have already said I would not raise tax on the highest earners too high to keep most of the highest skilled but some under 35s deciding to emigrate given they are the ones most demanding new housing, especially in London and the Home Counties, is no bad thing. Plenty more room for them in Canada or Australia for example as your family has discovered
My son and his partner emigrated to New Zealand in 2003 and both were a loss to our economy
Their relationship broke up as a consequence of aftermath of the Christchurch 2011 earthquake and in 2015 he married a Canadian and they live in Vancouver and will not be returning to the UK
This has nothing to do with countries having plenty of room
It does in part as both Canada and New Zealand have far lower population density than we do
The energy supplier had around 1.6 million customers when it collapsed a year ago.
Can someone explain how this breaks down? £6.5b for 1.6m customers implies that a business that buys energy wholesale and sells to consumers managed to lose more than £4,000 per customer.
Energy firms selling that much energy essentially without having paid for it up front, need to have capital requirements lodged with OFGEM instead, just like banks do with their regulators. It is blatantly obvious that the state should not let relatively small companies take one way price trading bets backed by the taxpayer, but no one is interested.
Yes, the likes of Bulb sold futures in energy at a fixed price, and hedged their bets that the price would come down. They ended up with a commitment to sell millions of £50 notes for £10 each, which predictably sent them bankrupt.
The situation was grave. Following an artificial length of time defying metaphorical gravity, it had got to the stage where it couldn't be ignored any more and the serious fiscal consequences had to be faced.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
Believe me, I have seen social care workers in action at very close quarters and the idea that it is a non skilled job that anyone on the dole with a couple of day's training can just drop into is an utter fantasy.
Well it certainly isn't a very high skilled job isn't it, you don't need a degree for it or even a vocational qualification beyond that you can learn on the job and we certainly don't need to import all those who do basic social care work from abroad when plenty of those at home can do it
Have you ever had any experience of elderly home care because if you had you would not be demeaning the very important and personal nature of the role
In a few years 14% per cent of adults will be paying the 40% income tax rate. It was just above 6% when the Tories took office. (IFS graph) pic.twitter.com/3MsdVu1mE8
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
That one in six includes people like Boris Johnson.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
That's a lot of recent decades for something to be unsustainable, and continuing in spite of Brexit. But I think you have form in entertaining delusions about rivers of blood against the foreigners when the average Brit just wants to get on in a manageable fashion.
Grannie and grandad can clean their own arse ! Having told social care workers from the EU to go fxck themselves they should realize actions have consequences.
There are still 1.38 million UK unemployed most of whom are quite capable of doing basic social care work like that
If they are still unemployed when theres so many vacancies many of them may well be unemployable.
Nobody is completely unemployable unless severely disabled or a dangerous criminal in prison, certainly not to do basic social care like helping pensioners feed themselves, go to the toilet, get out of bed etc
I think the job is trickier than you think, temperamentally it is not something just anyone can do for a start, as monkeys notes. I've had many family members work in that industry. Helping people go to the toilet and feed themselves is not something you want some surly, barely employable person to undertake.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
Believe me, I have seen social care workers in action at very close quarters and the idea that it is a non skilled job that anyone on the dole with a couple of day's training can just drop into is an utter fantasy.
Well it certainly isn't a very high skilled job isn't it, you don't need a degree for it or even a vocational qualification beyond that you can learn on the job and we certainly don't need to import all those who do basic social care work from abroad when plenty of those at home can do it
Have you ever had any experience of elderly home care because if you had you would not be demeaning the very important and personal nature of the role
It is not demeaning my grandmother was in a care home for years and while carers do important work it is hardly rocket science either. There are certainly many in Britain who could do the work without needing to import all our carers from abroad
The energy supplier had around 1.6 million customers when it collapsed a year ago.
Can someone explain how this breaks down? £6.5b for 1.6m customers implies that a business that buys energy wholesale and sells to consumers managed to lose more than £4,000 per customer.
Energy firms selling that much energy essentially without having paid for it up front, need to have capital requirements lodged with OFGEM instead, just like banks do with their regulators. It is blatantly obvious that the state should not let relatively small companies take one way price trading bets backed by the taxpayer, but no one is interested.
Yes, the likes of Bulb sold futures in energy at a fixed price, and hedged their bets that the price would come down. They ended up with a commitment to sell millions of £50 notes for £10 each, which predictably sent them bankrupt.
The problem is if anyone suggests regulation pre a disaster they are accused of being anti free market, or part of anti growth coalition by politicians and commentators who have very little understanding of what is happening.
So we have to wait for the taxpayer to pay out many billions rather than regulate mass market utility companies sensibly.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
That one in six includes people like Boris Johnson.
Are you trying to boost the anti-immigrant sentiment?
I'm disappointed that HS2 NE is still deleted, and that the Housing Market is left unreformed.
A lot of fiscal drag. Good to see some reform of top rate taxes. Hopefully the £100-£125k marginal rate will be next.
I did not hear anything on defence spending. Aha - I see 2% GDP will be maintained. That may be code for an effective reduction, depending how it is counted.
I wonder if a typical energy bill will be anywhere near pro-rata £3000 by the time we get to April.
Brave, but sensible, to go for a revaluation for business rates. A time bomb? Last time it was like stuck pigs squealing to heaven for those not paying wrt their disproportionate property price increases.
Sensible to raise Min Wage (I think to the highest net in Western Europe), and benefits / basic pensions by inflation rate.
Local Council finances look to be under threat. I missed whether these would be restricted to +5% on Council Tax this year. Those are also crying out for a re-valuation or reform.
To me (others will differ) Reeves' speech was a vacuum - about 95% pre-recorded rhetoric.
Big suspicion is, what good news there is got announced in speech, first impressions matter so they are shaping the first impressions. More controversial things like the Defence Budget cut you flagged, hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly.
On Topic. And as we were saying “what good news there is got announced in speech, controversial things hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly”
And so it begins
This was in the March Budget too (it's a bigger increase now because it's linked to RPI which is higher than previously forecast but it's not a change in policy, it was in there already).
About time too. There are finite amounts of fossil fuels in the ground, and burning them is destroying our environment, so anything that will dissuade their use and encourage the use of cleaner alternatives is to be commended. And it brings in a few bob too.
You're thinking too short term. Coal, oil and gas are - so long as the sun keeps shining - all renewable sources.
I don't think that's right. I think all the fossil fuel deposits were laid down before the more recent evolution of fungi and bacteria that would now break down organic deposits before they could be converted to fossil fuels.
Fascinating.
That had never occurred to me.
Surprised me at first too, but then, when I thought about it, I realised that the energy stored in fossil fuels is available to any organism that can evolve to access it from the organic matter before it becomes fossil fuels, and then it makes a lot more sense.
From that point of view the existence of fossil fuels at all is a fortuitous accident that provided a cheap energy source for our technological development.
So, had the fungi and bacteria been around at the time - and chewed through all the organic matter - what would the effect have been on the climate?
Would it have been the same as if we were to now burn all the fossil fuels in existence? (Theoretically, obviously. I assume only a tiny fraction of the earths fossil fuels have been/could be profitably extracted and burned)
Well, yes, if bacteria/fungi had released the carbon before it became fossil fuels then we would expect the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to have stayed a lot higher, the most obvious consequence of which would be no ice ages and higher sea levels.
Broadly speaking we would get to the same point by burning all fossil fuels now, but by a different route.
The current iteration of the Tory Party needs to FOAD.
You voted for Sunak, did you not?
As the least worst option, your candidate fucked up the economy for a generation, and will keep the party out for a similar generation.
Truss supporters, like Brexit supporters, really should reflect on the unflushable turds they've given the country.
No, the economic turds were built up by your mate the Chancellor from 2020 to 2022 and his predecessors over the 10 years before that. The fact that with one quick squeeze of his bowels his successor finally blocked the toilet for 3 weeks this Autumn is neither here nor there.
Truss and Kwarteng enacted virtually no measures of lasting effect apart from the NI reduction, which is just about the only thing of their legacy to survive after today. What they did do though was to remove the rose tinted spectacles from the markets' eyes, so that they're finally taking a more critical look and recognising the UK economy as the basket case it's become over the long term.
The UK economy has been a Ponzi scheme for 20 years. Relying on ever greater amounts of immigration (which led to perpetually high property prices) and fat taxes from the City. This was completely unsustainable because
1. All that immigration has deeply unpleasant or radical or contradictory consequences. Brexit was just one of them
2. High property prices are just another way to fuck the young, who then consider voting Corbyn, SNP, etc
3. The taxes from the City took a big hit from the GFC and yada yada yada
And now the markets have realised this and Ouch
We will no doubt survive, and eventually find a new economic model. But the pain of the necessary reset is going to be intense
Immigration isn't a Ponzi scheme, it's simply a natural consequence of different demographics and different economic situations in different parts of the world and the technology existing to make migration relatively cheap. It has always been like this - we act like it's a new thing because the phenomenon of other people coming to the UK is relatively recent (not that recent of course, large scale immigration started soon after ww2, more than 70 years ago) but we were exporting large numbers of people to the rest of the world from the 17th century onwards. When Britons emigrated to the Americas or Australia or Africa was that a Ponzi scheme? Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
Total bollocks
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
That's a lot of recent decades for something to be unsustainable, and continuing in spite of Brexit. But I think you have form in entertaining delusions about rivers of blood against the foreigners when the average Brit just wants to get on in a manageable fashion.
You don’t think immigration was an issue in the Leave vote, then? Good. Glad we cleared that up
Anyone else think, looking at those Bloomberg charts upthread, that Hunt might not have done enough to assuage the bond market?
I think he might be back, soon, for austerity round two (three?)…
I’m beginning to think the same, because he has cut spending, wherever not increased in line with inflation, but does it bring in enough to satisfy tge market? Promised tax rise for the future, like 6bn from fuel duty could be deferred before they happen, this idea of a Windfall Tax is a joke and should not be called that - it should be called making sure you invest as promised which you were going to do anyway therefore we are not taking a penny from you keep the rest Non tax. That’s exactly what it is, tell me I’m wrong.
The international money markets aren’t stupid. markets were assuaged to wait in recent weeks on impression the action they demanded on size of borrowing and size of promised spending from Truss government would be acted on - they will know the degree it has been or not.
What mostly fuelled the run on the £ after the last budget was largely what the US done to strengthen the $, not Kwartengs budget. He did though spike borrowing costs however in a situation where they have been going up all year anyway, not just for us but similarly same rise across Europe.
It’s the stock market more in the front line now from real fiscal and monetary tightening, too much QE has filled stock market with inflation. Too much tightening encourages correction of that inflation and we don’t know if stock market is ready for - whereas the opposite, just as you ask, a promised budget on dealing with borrowing that doesn’t deal with it, takes us back to square on higher borrowing costs.
They couldn’t possibly achieve worst of both outcomes with this budget could they, it has to be one or the other, or got the budget perfect so neither negative response.
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
The UK is locked into a decade of sharp decline. This is quite calamitous. The combination of high debt, high tax, high inflation and slow growth means we are all fucked
We will again become The Sick Man of Europe. Time to head for the exit
This is what the graph looks for a political party that knows it will probably be out of power in two years and has decided to try a 'Hail Mary' pass, followed by scorched earth. ~AA https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1593295258414374912
I thought that I had missed the bit about spending cuts. It seems that Hunt did too.
No, given the current polls he just left further austerity for Starmer and Reeves to deal with in the likely next Labour government, with the unions and Labour left they will likely have to raise taxes significantly further to avoid spending cuts
What do you mean beginning the sentence with no, when you go on to admit the crime?
The changes to the windfall tax are going to fuck the North Sea independents. Not just the headline increase by a further 10 percentage pts but the reduction in the investment allowance from 80% to 29%. At a time when the independents already find it tough to finance themselves and we are supposedly desperate to improve energy security (away from the likes of horrid people like Qatar) and fix our balance of payments.
Good one boys. Well done.
The reduction of the investment allowance is madness.
On Wed, in vote between Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott for the next US Senate Minority Leader, the incumbent pounded the challenger (chairman of GOP Senate campaign committee this cycle) like a stump into the Potomac mud.
McConnell 37 versus Scott 10
Yes, crossed Scott off my list of possible (very) long shots for the nomination.
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
No one was incensed that you went to NYC. You moved to improve your lot. Good for you
What was irritating was you, a New Zealander living in America, intending to retire to Portugal, continuing to wank on and on about British politics
But in the grander scheme it all seems pretty trivial now. So knock yerself out
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
Congratulations on your success, genuinely. However, do you consider you paid too much tax in the U.K., and if so who do you think should have been paying rather than you?
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
The only thing that stops me working in America is the guns, I'm absolutely terrified of guns and the American gun culture.
I had a friend who worked in America, she sacked somebody, and he was clearing his desk, and then she saw his gun, she admitted a little bit of wee came out of her.
The changes to the windfall tax are going to fuck the North Sea independents. Not just the headline increase by a further 10 percentage pts but the reduction in the investment allowance from 80% to 29%. At a time when the independents already find it tough to finance themselves and we are supposedly desperate to improve energy security (away from the likes of horrid people like Qatar) and fix our balance of payments.
Good one boys. Well done.
The reduction of the investment allowance is madness.
I think there will be some quite unfavourable headlines following this budget. Let's hope Sunak's premiership ends nice and fast. With it Hunt's career in frontline politics. Cheerio. It's been average.
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
Congratulations on your success, genuinely. However, do you consider you paid too much tax in the U.K., and if so who do you think should have been paying rather than you?
Yes, in the end I think I paid too much, *given the way the government used the money to prop up the wealthiest*.
I “came from nothing”, so punitive taxes on income versus almost nothing on wealth feels like a personal insult.
I'm disappointed that HS2 NE is still deleted, and that the Housing Market is left unreformed.
A lot of fiscal drag. Good to see some reform of top rate taxes. Hopefully the £100-£125k marginal rate will be next.
I did not hear anything on defence spending. Aha - I see 2% GDP will be maintained. That may be code for an effective reduction, depending how it is counted.
I wonder if a typical energy bill will be anywhere near pro-rata £3000 by the time we get to April.
Brave, but sensible, to go for a revaluation for business rates. A time bomb? Last time it was like stuck pigs squealing to heaven for those not paying wrt their disproportionate property price increases.
Sensible to raise Min Wage (I think to the highest net in Western Europe), and benefits / basic pensions by inflation rate.
Local Council finances look to be under threat. I missed whether these would be restricted to +5% on Council Tax this year. Those are also crying out for a re-valuation or reform.
To me (others will differ) Reeves' speech was a vacuum - about 95% pre-recorded rhetoric.
Big suspicion is, what good news there is got announced in speech, first impressions matter so they are shaping the first impressions. More controversial things like the Defence Budget cut you flagged, hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly.
On Topic. And as we were saying “what good news there is got announced in speech, controversial things hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly”
And so it begins
This was in the March Budget too (it's a bigger increase now because it's linked to RPI which is higher than previously forecast but it's not a change in policy, it was in there already).
About time too. There are finite amounts of fossil fuels in the ground, and burning them is destroying our environment, so anything that will dissuade their use and encourage the use of cleaner alternatives is to be commended. And it brings in a few bob too.
You're thinking too short term. Coal, oil and gas are - so long as the sun keeps shining - all renewable sources.
I don't think that's right. I think all the fossil fuel deposits were laid down before the more recent evolution of fungi and bacteria that would now break down organic deposits before they could be converted to fossil fuels.
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
Congratulations on your success, genuinely. However, do you consider you paid too much tax in the U.K., and if so who do you think should have been paying rather than you?
Yes, in the end I think I paid too much, *given the way the government used the money to prop up the wealthiest*.
I “came from nothing”, so punitive taxes on income versus almost nothing on wealth feels like a personal insult.
So a majority of American voters decided to give the GOP two years with a house majority in which they’ll spend their time not trying to help the country but the first thing they’ve decided to do is to investigate Hunter Biden and go after Jo Biden for some offences that they haven’t made up yet .
The GOP are a cancer on the USA .
Well, there are a score of GOP winners who won't support that because they are in swing districts, and a few dozen who won't support the House majority unless it does very conservative things, so I'd hardly say there is a very stable majority at all, right now.
I think it is pretty likely we'll see a government shutdown in the US, though.
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
Congratulations on your success, genuinely. However, do you consider you paid too much tax in the U.K., and if so who do you think should have been paying rather than you?
Yes, in the end I think I paid too much, *given the way the government used the money to prop up the wealthiest*.
I “came from nothing”, so punitive taxes on income versus almost nothing on wealth feels like a personal insult.
Same.
With respect, you have/had professional middle class parents. My dad left school at 14 and is barely literate.
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
Congratulations on your success, genuinely. However, do you consider you paid too much tax in the U.K., and if so who do you think should have been paying rather than you?
Yes, in the end I think I paid too much, *given the way the government used the money to prop up the wealthiest*.
I “came from nothing”, so punitive taxes on income versus almost nothing on wealth feels like a personal insult.
I understand that view and have a fair amount of sympathy for taxing wealth, but I still go back to who you think should pay the tax more than someone earning as well as you. I also understand that as relatively young and healthy as you are you may feel that your taxes are being wasted, but that’s the joy of tax. Unlike Margot in the Good Life, you don’t get to choose which bits you pay and which you don’t.
Progressive taxation means the wealthiest pay more. I think you tend left of centre, so I’m slightly surprised by you not signing up for that, but I guess we all have different ideas of what is fair, and what not. Have you lived in the states long enough to appreciate the differences?
The changes to the windfall tax are going to fuck the North Sea independents. Not just the headline increase by a further 10 percentage pts but the reduction in the investment allowance from 80% to 29%. At a time when the independents already find it tough to finance themselves and we are supposedly desperate to improve energy security (away from the likes of horrid people like Qatar) and fix our balance of payments.
Good one boys. Well done.
The reduction of the investment allowance is madness.
I think there will be some quite unfavourable headlines following this budget. Let's hope Sunak's premiership ends nice and fast. With it Hunt's career in frontline politics. Cheerio. It's been average.
The polling after the doomsday budget will be interesting
So a majority of American voters decided to give the GOP two years with a house majority in which they’ll spend their time not trying to help the country but the first thing they’ve decided to do is to investigate Hunter Biden and go after Jo Biden for some offences that they haven’t made up yet .
The GOP are a cancer on the USA .
You do have a point.
Yet strange as it may seem, loss of US House could work to Biden's and Democrat's favor in next two years.
> For one thing, wretched excess AND disunity of GOP will likely be on full display, and then some.
> For another, and perhaps more important, Democrats will NOT be in control of the executive AND legislative branches of federal govt.
> As for judicial branch, Democrats will also still be willing AND able to contrast their message (proposed legislation) AND actions (federal court appointments) with Republican control of SCOTUS.
Note that having his party control just ONE chamber (preferably Senate due to advise & consent) has in past enhanced rather than detracted from leverage & effectiveness of POTUS viz-a-viz Congress.
Now that they can’t legislate anything even mildly contentious, the administration can concentrate on governing. And if the Republican House spends two years stoking the Hunter Biden binfire it’s not going to help them in the slightest.
In a few years 14% per cent of adults will be paying the 40% income tax rate. It was just above 6% when the Tories took office. (IFS graph) pic.twitter.com/3MsdVu1mE8
Surely that is a meaningless stat? Nobody with a brain cares about what tax rate they pay on part of their income, they instead care about how much tax they pay in total. So you have to consider allowances (which have gone up a lot), bands (which have changed), other income (lots of people get credits of various sorts), and all the other forms of direct taxation (like NI), and then look at how people's gross versus net pay has changed.
I'm disappointed that HS2 NE is still deleted, and that the Housing Market is left unreformed.
A lot of fiscal drag. Good to see some reform of top rate taxes. Hopefully the £100-£125k marginal rate will be next.
I did not hear anything on defence spending. Aha - I see 2% GDP will be maintained. That may be code for an effective reduction, depending how it is counted.
I wonder if a typical energy bill will be anywhere near pro-rata £3000 by the time we get to April.
Brave, but sensible, to go for a revaluation for business rates. A time bomb? Last time it was like stuck pigs squealing to heaven for those not paying wrt their disproportionate property price increases.
Sensible to raise Min Wage (I think to the highest net in Western Europe), and benefits / basic pensions by inflation rate.
Local Council finances look to be under threat. I missed whether these would be restricted to +5% on Council Tax this year. Those are also crying out for a re-valuation or reform.
To me (others will differ) Reeves' speech was a vacuum - about 95% pre-recorded rhetoric.
Big suspicion is, what good news there is got announced in speech, first impressions matter so they are shaping the first impressions. More controversial things like the Defence Budget cut you flagged, hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly.
On Topic. And as we were saying “what good news there is got announced in speech, controversial things hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly”
And so it begins
This was in the March Budget too (it's a bigger increase now because it's linked to RPI which is higher than previously forecast but it's not a change in policy, it was in there already).
About time too. There are finite amounts of fossil fuels in the ground, and burning them is destroying our environment, so anything that will dissuade their use and encourage the use of cleaner alternatives is to be commended. And it brings in a few bob too.
You're thinking too short term. Coal, oil and gas are - so long as the sun keeps shining - all renewable sources.
I don't think that's right. I think all the fossil fuel deposits were laid down before the more recent evolution of fungi and bacteria that would now break down organic deposits before they could be converted to fossil fuels.
On the seabed too?
When a whale dies and settles on the seabed it's a bonanza for a variety of other life to have all that energy falling from above.
I'm disappointed that HS2 NE is still deleted, and that the Housing Market is left unreformed.
A lot of fiscal drag. Good to see some reform of top rate taxes. Hopefully the £100-£125k marginal rate will be next.
I did not hear anything on defence spending. Aha - I see 2% GDP will be maintained. That may be code for an effective reduction, depending how it is counted.
I wonder if a typical energy bill will be anywhere near pro-rata £3000 by the time we get to April.
Brave, but sensible, to go for a revaluation for business rates. A time bomb? Last time it was like stuck pigs squealing to heaven for those not paying wrt their disproportionate property price increases.
Sensible to raise Min Wage (I think to the highest net in Western Europe), and benefits / basic pensions by inflation rate.
Local Council finances look to be under threat. I missed whether these would be restricted to +5% on Council Tax this year. Those are also crying out for a re-valuation or reform.
To me (others will differ) Reeves' speech was a vacuum - about 95% pre-recorded rhetoric.
Big suspicion is, what good news there is got announced in speech, first impressions matter so they are shaping the first impressions. More controversial things like the Defence Budget cut you flagged, hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly.
On Topic. And as we were saying “what good news there is got announced in speech, controversial things hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly”
And so it begins
This was in the March Budget too (it's a bigger increase now because it's linked to RPI which is higher than previously forecast but it's not a change in policy, it was in there already).
About time too. There are finite amounts of fossil fuels in the ground, and burning them is destroying our environment, so anything that will dissuade their use and encourage the use of cleaner alternatives is to be commended. And it brings in a few bob too.
You're thinking too short term. Coal, oil and gas are - so long as the sun keeps shining - all renewable sources.
I don't think that's right. I think all the fossil fuel deposits were laid down before the more recent evolution of fungi and bacteria that would now break down organic deposits before they could be converted to fossil fuels.
Fascinating.
That had never occurred to me.
Surprised me at first too, but then, when I thought about it, I realised that the energy stored in fossil fuels is available to any organism that can evolve to access it from the organic matter before it becomes fossil fuels, and then it makes a lot more sense.
From that point of view the existence of fossil fuels at all is a fortuitous accident that provided a cheap energy source for our technological development.
So, had the fungi and bacteria been around at the time - and chewed through all the organic matter - what would the effect have been on the climate?
Would it have been the same as if we were to now burn all the fossil fuels in existence? (Theoretically, obviously. I assume only a tiny fraction of the earths fossil fuels have been/could be profitably extracted and burned)
Well, yes, if bacteria/fungi had released the carbon before it became fossil fuels then we would expect the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to have stayed a lot higher, the most obvious consequence of which would be no ice ages and higher sea levels.
Broadly speaking we would get to the same point by burning all fossil fuels now, but by a different route.
I thought most carbon was stored as carbonates - ie limestone - and not coal or oil. This will eventually be recycled at a plate boundary but it takes a looong time.
There are places where the bacteria don't work - bogs. Peat could eventually be the new coal (given enough time), but if it dries out then it oxidises away.
PB is full of Brexiters urging the young to emigrate. The same ones who seem incensed that I myself escaped to New York.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
Congratulations on your success, genuinely. However, do you consider you paid too much tax in the U.K., and if so who do you think should have been paying rather than you?
Yes, in the end I think I paid too much, *given the way the government used the money to prop up the wealthiest*.
I “came from nothing”, so punitive taxes on income versus almost nothing on wealth feels like a personal insult.
Same.
With respect, you have/had professional middle class parents. My dad left school at 14 and is barely literate.
I know, I think reflects well on the UK that my grandfather moved to the UK with nothing and his son and grandson are part of the middle classes, we've had no barriers to that.
I'm disappointed that HS2 NE is still deleted, and that the Housing Market is left unreformed.
A lot of fiscal drag. Good to see some reform of top rate taxes. Hopefully the £100-£125k marginal rate will be next.
I did not hear anything on defence spending. Aha - I see 2% GDP will be maintained. That may be code for an effective reduction, depending how it is counted.
I wonder if a typical energy bill will be anywhere near pro-rata £3000 by the time we get to April.
Brave, but sensible, to go for a revaluation for business rates. A time bomb? Last time it was like stuck pigs squealing to heaven for those not paying wrt their disproportionate property price increases.
Sensible to raise Min Wage (I think to the highest net in Western Europe), and benefits / basic pensions by inflation rate.
Local Council finances look to be under threat. I missed whether these would be restricted to +5% on Council Tax this year. Those are also crying out for a re-valuation or reform.
To me (others will differ) Reeves' speech was a vacuum - about 95% pre-recorded rhetoric.
Big suspicion is, what good news there is got announced in speech, first impressions matter so they are shaping the first impressions. More controversial things like the Defence Budget cut you flagged, hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly.
On Topic. And as we were saying “what good news there is got announced in speech, controversial things hidden away in the budget wording, or not even clearly there, it needs someone to ask the right question to have the way forward explained publicly”
And so it begins
This was in the March Budget too (it's a bigger increase now because it's linked to RPI which is higher than previously forecast but it's not a change in policy, it was in there already).
About time too. There are finite amounts of fossil fuels in the ground, and burning them is destroying our environment, so anything that will dissuade their use and encourage the use of cleaner alternatives is to be commended. And it brings in a few bob too.
You're thinking too short term. Coal, oil and gas are - so long as the sun keeps shining - all renewable sources.
I don't think that's right. I think all the fossil fuel deposits were laid down before the more recent evolution of fungi and bacteria that would now break down organic deposits before they could be converted to fossil fuels.
Fascinating.
That had never occurred to me.
Surprised me at first too, but then, when I thought about it, I realised that the energy stored in fossil fuels is available to any organism that can evolve to access it from the organic matter before it becomes fossil fuels, and then it makes a lot more sense.
From that point of view the existence of fossil fuels at all is a fortuitous accident that provided a cheap energy source for our technological development.
So, had the fungi and bacteria been around at the time - and chewed through all the organic matter - what would the effect have been on the climate?
Would it have been the same as if we were to now burn all the fossil fuels in existence? (Theoretically, obviously. I assume only a tiny fraction of the earths fossil fuels have been/could be profitably extracted and burned)
Well, yes, if bacteria/fungi had released the carbon before it became fossil fuels then we would expect the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to have stayed a lot higher, the most obvious consequence of which would be no ice ages and higher sea levels.
Broadly speaking we would get to the same point by burning all fossil fuels now, but by a different route.
That’s blown my mind.
My next question (feel free to ignore me if you’re busy - I can do my own research!) is;
How would that counter-factual (a world with no fossil fuels and much higher concentrations of CO2) have interacted with human evolution?
Would humans even exist?
Presumably, most of the earth would be uninhabitable for humans as we have currently evolved, except, perhaps, in Northern Russia / Greenland / Canada?
Or would we have evolved to cope with the higher temperatures? Would the concentrations of CO2 been too high?
Comments
As I say below, I don't think Brexit is seriously significant in our present travails. This is the result of 20 years of steadily worsening economic management, reliance on too much immigration, then the global shocks of Covid and the War, and so on
However Remoaners like you should be cheerful. Despite the above I am pretty sure many voters WILL associate all this with Brexit, and blame Brexit (the Remainer media will make sure this happens) and there will be a surge of support for SM/CU and maybe even Rejoin. So you might get your wish
The energy supplier had around 1.6 million customers when it collapsed a year ago.
Can someone explain how this breaks down? £6.5b for 1.6m customers implies that a business that buys energy wholesale and sells to consumers managed to lose more than £4,000 per customer.
How?
https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1593315479980052482
Or Thailand
Their relationship broke up as a consequence of aftermath of the Christchurch 2011 earthquake and in 2015 he married a Canadian and they live in Vancouver and will not be returning to the UK
This has nothing to do with countries having plenty of room
The number of drivers on their phone is just mad. It's worse than being drunk for being in a collision.
People creeping through traffic are the worse - unlikely to see a kid running across or a bike filtering through until it's too late.
The remaining unemployed of the nation, in the broadest sense, consist of people over about 55 who are basically sick to death of working, and are getting by on sources of income other than their own wages until they become eligible for the state pension (savings, early drawdown of private pensions, income from a partner still in work, and so on,) some people who are between jobs but are actively looking (virtually all of whom will expect something with more social hours and better pay, e.g. shelf stacking in Lidl,) people who are plain workshy, and those for whom finding suitable employment is very hard (because they have chronic illnesses, a lot of caring responsibilities, significant disabilities, or learning or behavioural problems.)
Basically, it's no use getting the DWP to try to force unsuitable people into taking on these important and responsible roles within society by threatening them with benefit sanctions. You want a sufficient number of quality carers, you need to tempt suitable candidates out of early retirement or out of other occupations with lots of money; or you import a lot of appropriate workers from low income countries, who might still be prepared to slog away for the pittance that care work currently pays in Britain; or some combination of the two. So, what's it to be?
Just to move off from matters budgetary for a moment, catching up on bits of polling from earlier in the week.
I note the latest Redfield & Wilton "Blue Wall" poll which is of interest:
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/blue-wall-voting-intention-13-14-november-2022/
57% of 2019 Conservative voters intending to support the party again with 18% now voting Labour. The overall swing is 17.5% from Conservative to Labour. 65% of LD and 55% of Labour voters willing to vote tactically.
The latest R&W overall poll (published today) - LAB 48, CON 27, LD 10 produces a 224 Labour majority on UNS on the new boundaries but that goes up to 334 with tactical voting.
All this may be rendered moot by the public acclaim today's Budget will no doubt achieve - doubtless there are PB members whose phones have been inundated by messages from complete strangers hailing Hunt's proposals a triumph and how they will never doubt the Tories again.
Back in the real world, the one area which still seems very uncertain is funding for local authorities. I'm sure plenty of councils of all stripes and none (and worth bearing in mind a lot of English councils will be going to the polls next May) will be happy to blame the Government for the 5% Council Tax rise (still below inflation) and whether today's pronouncements will mitigate the risk of widespread section 114 notices remains to be seen.
Edit: I mean, do you want to be looked after by someone literally unemployable at anything else?
Sadio Mane ruled out of the world cup.
Cut out and keep - Opniums Saturday poll will have Tories 31%+
Wether the voters getting £600 hand outs for 10% benefit and pensions increase should love a government for simply choosing not to give them less than inflation, probably shows low expectations were going into this budget after recent months.
But workers not getting 10% pay rises, anyone just above thresholds of UC support, perhaps on income 25-35k, who are still utterly struggling but not getting the extra support they see others getting, why would they love this budget?
I would have no problem being looked after by someone formerly long term unemployed no
From that point of view the existence of fossil fuels at all is a fortuitous accident that provided a cheap energy source for our technological development.
Would it have been the same as if we were to now burn all the fossil fuels in existence? (Theoretically, obviously. I assume only a tiny fraction of the earths fossil fuels have been/could be profitably extracted and burned)
You seem to think caring is easy. But 'unskilled' jobs are not actually unskilled, and not everyone can do anything. Some people for instance might not be suited to basic admin jobs as office work drives them up the wall. Likewise, some people might physically be able to care for someone but lack the judgement or attitude to do so properly.
You cannot expect anyone to want to do it, or be suitable even if they do. So you cannot just assume those still unemployed could all do so.
Arguably the entire human civilisation, which is devouring the world's resources at an unsustainable pace, is a Ponzi scheme, but there's nothing especially unsustainable about post war immigration patterns in the UK. People might not like it, of course, that's an entirely different question.
If you don't have very high qualifications and don't want to do basic work tough, the taxpayer doesn't have to pay for everlasting UC and benefits for you either if you refuse to apply for even basic work
I'm sure you've seen this already but just incase I'm sure you'll love this classical pottery
https://twitter.com/pompei79/status/1593212710074089472
The situation was grave. Following an artificial length of time defying metaphorical gravity, it had got to the stage where it couldn't be ignored any more and the serious fiscal consequences had to be faced.
Yes.
I have turned on my central heating.
— Ben Riley-Smith (@benrileysmith) November 17, 2022
Immigration into the UK in recent decades has been completely unprecedented in scale and proportion
1 in 6 people in the UK is now foreign born. This has consequences. And one of them was Brexit. It’s not why I voted for it, but many did. As Remainers keep reminding us. And yet it was the Remainers that opened the borders
So we have to wait for the taxpayer to pay out many billions rather than regulate mass market utility companies sensibly.
Broadly speaking we would get to the same point by burning all fossil fuels now, but by a different route.
They had groovy, v expensive offices in Spitalfields for their *call centre*.
“Do the math”, we we say over here.
The international money markets aren’t stupid. markets were assuaged to wait in recent weeks on impression the action they demanded on size of borrowing and size of promised spending from Truss government would be acted on - they will know the degree it has been or not.
What mostly fuelled the run on the £ after the last budget was largely what the US done to strengthen the $, not Kwartengs budget. He did though spike borrowing costs however in a situation where they have been going up all year anyway, not just for us but similarly same rise across Europe.
It’s the stock market more in the front line now from real fiscal and monetary tightening, too much QE has filled stock market with inflation. Too much tightening encourages correction of that inflation and we don’t know if stock market is ready for - whereas the opposite, just as you ask, a promised budget on dealing with borrowing that doesn’t deal with it, takes us back to square on higher borrowing costs.
They couldn’t possibly achieve worst of both outcomes with this budget could they, it has to be one or the other, or got the budget perfect so neither negative response.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63668626
If he actually really put his mind to it, he could be making footballer wages.
I don’t talk about my circumstances much but for years I was paying six figures in tax before I managed to get out.
The US is quite dreadful in many respects, but at least I no longer feel like I am working simply to keep elderly bigots in their overvalued properties.
She also served during the Trump administration.
ETA someone will be along to say Gordon Brown stopped killing them off.
What was irritating was you, a New Zealander living in America, intending to retire to Portugal, continuing to wank on and on about British politics
But in the grander scheme it all seems pretty trivial now. So knock yerself out
However, do you consider you paid too much tax in the U.K., and if so who do you think should have been paying rather than you?
As long as English is the Lingua Franca of the world, people will want to come here.
Plus, try being a minority in France.
I had a friend who worked in America, she sacked somebody, and he was clearing his desk, and then she saw his gun, she admitted a little bit of wee came out of her.
I “came from nothing”, so punitive taxes on income versus almost nothing on wealth feels like a personal insult.
Whatever our political disagreements in the UK it’s like a love-in compared to what’s going on in the USA.
https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1593330388830666752
TRUMP LAKE 2024
Progressive taxation means the wealthiest pay more. I think you tend left of centre, so I’m slightly surprised by you not signing up for that, but I guess we all have different ideas of what is fair, and what not. Have you lived in the states long enough to appreciate the differences?
Can it get even worse for the Tories? I say Yes
And if the Republican House spends two years stoking the Hunter Biden binfire it’s not going to help them in the slightest.
There are places where the bacteria don't work - bogs. Peat could eventually be the new coal (given enough time), but if it dries out then it oxidises away.
See: The Holme Post.
Or not..
https://twitter.com/PeterArnottGlas/status/1593235651473813506?s=20&t=uYGjD-Jq7otJzSKCcGDO3w
But the markets who want us to do something about borrowing and spending are watching…
My next question (feel free to ignore me if you’re busy - I can do my own research!) is;
How would that counter-factual (a world with no fossil fuels and much higher concentrations of CO2) have interacted with human evolution?
Would humans even exist?
Presumably, most of the earth would be uninhabitable for humans as we have currently evolved, except, perhaps, in Northern Russia / Greenland / Canada?
Or would we have evolved to cope with the higher temperatures? Would the concentrations of CO2 been too high?