p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
This year was the perfect year to introduce NI on pensioners as well with the triple lock increase covering all of the tax rise for middle income pensioners so only those with £24k+ would be bet worse off.
Any year is a good year to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Out of interest as I don't actually know though I should. Does an employer pay employer's NI if the employee is not paying employee's NI? That would surely skew the job market to some extent as it would make it cheaper to employ pensioners.
Employers pay contributions on employee earnings between £758 and £1048 per month. I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
WFH has never felt better than on cold freezing days like today.
I am appearing in both Portree and Airdrie today, all without leaving my study. This would not have happened pre-Covid.
But you've missed out on a paid trip to Skye! The mountains are looking incredible at the moment.
I know, I was actually looking forward to it but my opponents whinged about the weather and the Sheriff decided we did not need to be there in person after all. Which, given my other commitments is probably just as well. Winding down my practice after 20 odd years to become a full time public sector sponger, sorry AD, has been a lot more work than I anticipated.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
This year was the perfect year to introduce NI on pensioners as well with the triple lock increase covering all of the tax rise for middle income pensioners so only those with £24k+ would be bet worse off.
Any year is a good year to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Out of interest as I don't actually know though I should. Does an employer pay employer's NI if the employee is not paying employee's NI? That would surely skew the job market to some extent as it would make it cheaper to employ pensioners.
Politically, the best time to do it is in Year 1 of a reasonable majority. Sadly, something else rather big got in the way of things last time around. Perhaps Starmer, were he to be rewarded with a majority, might go for it.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
This year was the perfect year to introduce NI on pensioners as well with the triple lock increase covering all of the tax rise for middle income pensioners so only those with £24k+ would be bet worse off.
Any year is a good year to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Out of interest as I don't actually know though I should. Does an employer pay employer's NI if the employee is not paying employee's NI? That would surely skew the job market to some extent as it would make it cheaper to employ pensioners.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
I agree with you and am one of those pushing for NI to be paid by everyone in work irrespective of age. But you are being unfair or disingenuous in your attack on Malcolm. Throughout the discussions this morning everyone has been making a distinction between tax and NI and Malcolm is clearly referring to the tax element rather than the NI element. It is an accepted language we use in these discussions even if we think the system is wrong.
So to say he is living in a fantasy world is uncalled for.
I am happy to apologise when I get it wrong but not having trawled through the whole thread I based my comments on what Malcolm said, namely "pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else".
In my book anyone who thinks NI is not a tax is living in a fantasy world.
He was replying to a specific comment that said
"The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band)."
There is no way that could be read as referring to NI. You are wrong on this and should be big enough to admit it.
Yes but he replied with a statement that is false; pensioners do not pay the same tax as everyone else.
I did make one mistake though: Pensioners pay 12% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa (not 13.25% as I said). My bad.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
This year was the perfect year to introduce NI on pensioners as well with the triple lock increase covering all of the tax rise for middle income pensioners so only those with £24k+ would be bet worse off.
Any year is a good year to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Out of interest as I don't actually know though I should. Does an employer pay employer's NI if the employee is not paying employee's NI? That would surely skew the job market to some extent as it would make it cheaper to employ pensioners.
Employers pay contributions on employee earnings between £758 and £1048 per month. I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
What I mean is that we know that NI is made up of two elements - employers and employees.
We also know that currently employees do not pay NI after retirement age.
My question is whether employers continue to pay their element of NI after that age or whether that stops at the same time as the employees contribution?
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
The problem with regarding NI as a a tax - which it is, of course, in one, real, sense - is that it is explicitly treated as a payment in return for which one gets the state pension. So it is also not a tax but an insurance payment. Certainly as it is marketed and deemanded and as the SP paperwork treats it. So, once the need for the insurance payment vanishes, so too does the justification for paying it. If I grow old and give up drivbing and sell my car, I don't have to keep paying the road fund licence fee. How is the ordinary person in the street to think otherwise?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
This year was the perfect year to introduce NI on pensioners as well with the triple lock increase covering all of the tax rise for middle income pensioners so only those with £24k+ would be bet worse off.
Any year is a good year to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Out of interest as I don't actually know though I should. Does an employer pay employer's NI if the employee is not paying employee's NI? That would surely skew the job market to some extent as it would make it cheaper to employ pensioners.
Employers pay contributions on employee earnings between £758 and £1048 per month. I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
What I mean is that we know that NI is made up of two elements - employers and employees.
We also know that currently employees do not pay NI after retirement age.
My question is whether employers continue to pay their element of NI after that age or whether that stops at the same time as the employees contribution?
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
Clutching at straws now David, anyone born before 1935 and still standing is not someone anyone should be jealous of them getting a piddling extra tax allowance.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
This is so typical of the classic tory attitude to generalise and deride public sector workers. It has proven to be massively profitable for a lot of people and I will explain why. Tory blindness and prejudice about the issue of public sector pay means that they cannot formulate effective policy to address vast skill shortages driven by the fact that many public sector workers quit in favour of careers in the 'lower paid' private sector. It is perhaps best thought of as ultimately being just a limitation of understanding which, having been perpetuated for 12 years, will now result in catastrophic and well deserved political losses. A large amount of people in the public sector have gamed this perfectly; they walked out of jobs paying £30k and now earn £90k as 'interim contractors' doing the same job, to fill 'temporary skill shortages', because the public sector has no choice as it needs to fulfil 'statutory functions', which have in turn been massively expanded by.... the conservative government! The tories are in a lot of ways a great friend to public sector workers, just not in quite the way they might imagine.
Yes, quite true. Why work for the NHS as an ODP (Operating Department Practitioner) on band 5, (starting at £27 000) when you can work Agency for £500 per day in the same hospital?
And this is why public sector workers need better pay especially at the lower end.
(At the moment) It is not a question of public sector vs private sector, pay restraint, fairness or productivity. Supply and demand and basic maths overrides all of those.
Keeping public sector wages low is costing the state and taxpayer money, not saving it at all.
Inflation falling and this is without the drop in petrol prices from ~160p to ~150p and expected to fall to ~140p by the end of this month. We could see the headline rate fall quite a lot faster than is being forecast just because of base effects
Diesel is not dropping as fast , cost me £118 to fill up at weekend.
Even there though Malcolm (and the differential between petrol and diesel has never been anything like this) the rate has come down a few pence over the last couple of months and is definitely no longer rising. Still bloody expensive though.
Yes down below 180 a litre now at least but just seems to be grifting to charge close to 30p a litre more than petrol.
Inflation falling and this is without the drop in petrol prices from ~160p to ~150p and expected to fall to ~140p by the end of this month. We could see the headline rate fall quite a lot faster than is being forecast just because of base effects
Diesel is not dropping as fast , cost me £118 to fill up at weekend.
Blame Putin.
Have to say I am happy to pay for him to be thrashed
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
This year was the perfect year to introduce NI on pensioners as well with the triple lock increase covering all of the tax rise for middle income pensioners so only those with £24k+ would be bet worse off.
Any year is a good year to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Out of interest as I don't actually know though I should. Does an employer pay employer's NI if the employee is not paying employee's NI? That would surely skew the job market to some extent as it would make it cheaper to employ pensioners.
Politically, the best time to do it is in Year 1 of a reasonable majority. Sadly, something else rather big got in the way of things last time around. Perhaps Starmer, were he to be rewarded with a majority, might go for it.
Given that better off pensioners are pretty much core Conservative vote these days, any change has to come from the left.
Stand by for lots of aggressive questioning from the blue team and "no plans to..." from the red.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
This year was the perfect year to introduce NI on pensioners as well with the triple lock increase covering all of the tax rise for middle income pensioners so only those with £24k+ would be bet worse off.
Any year is a good year to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Out of interest as I don't actually know though I should. Does an employer pay employer's NI if the employee is not paying employee's NI? That would surely skew the job market to some extent as it would make it cheaper to employ pensioners.
Employers pay contributions on employee earnings between £758 and £1048 per month. I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
What I mean is that we know that NI is made up of two elements - employers and employees.
We also know that currently employees do not pay NI after retirement age.
My question is whether employers continue to pay their element of NI after that age or whether that stops at the same time as the employees contribution?
Deleted - misunderstood, on reflectrion.
This is weird. Richard asked a perfectly sensible question, yet at least 3 of us misread it. I wrote a whole pile of stuff that I had to go back and delete as completely irrelevant.
Inflation falling and this is without the drop in petrol prices from ~160p to ~150p and expected to fall to ~140p by the end of this month. We could see the headline rate fall quite a lot faster than is being forecast just because of base effects
Diesel is not dropping as fast , cost me £118 to fill up at weekend.
Even there though Malcolm (and the differential between petrol and diesel has never been anything like this) the rate has come down a few pence over the last couple of months and is definitely no longer rising. Still bloody expensive though.
Yes down below 180 a litre now at least but just seems to be grifting to charge close to 30p a litre more than petrol.
I've seen a reasonably persuasive analysis that garages are making less margin on diesel than petrol as there's less refining capacity for it here. But if that's true, some temporary tax changes could be called for - diesel prices fuel inflation more than petrol because pretty much all logistics runs on diesel.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
Isn't the issue with means testing pensions that it discourages people from saving for their pensions, making a lot of our underlying problems even worse?
That’s one issue. Another is that, as with child benefit, the number of people actually affected is much smaller than expected (and very over-represented among people on this board, their friends and family).
The more sensible option should be to merge employee NI into income tax, which has been in the political too-difficult pile for several decades already - and so long as they leave the existing option to pay in when not working or working abroad, for totally selfish reasons!
No, employee NI should be ring-fenced for the state pension, contributions based employment benefits and ideally some state healthcare as it was established to do
NI may have been set up as such, but it isn't anymore and pensioners like me who can afford it should pay it. It should be merged with income tax and make tax simpler. Regardless of what you think it is for, it is just another tax now.
I do however agree with you on the state pension. The state pension should be more generous to benefit those less well off and higher proportion clawed back for the more well off. Combining NI with tax helps do that.
You can though only now claim JSA if you have made sufficient NI contributions, otherwise you have to go on universal credit.
Eligibility for the state pension is also dependent on NI contributions or credits
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
Isn't the issue with means testing pensions that it discourages people from saving for their pensions, making a lot of our underlying problems even worse?
That’s one issue. Another is that, as with child benefit, the number of people actually affected is much smaller than expected (and very over-represented among people on this board, their friends and family).
The more sensible option should be to merge employee NI into income tax, which has been in the political too-difficult pile for several decades already - and so long as they leave the existing option to pay in when not working or working abroad, for totally selfish reasons!
No, employee NI should be ring-fenced for the state pension, contributions based employment benefits and ideally some state healthcare as it was established to do
NI may have been set up as such, but it isn't anymore and pensioners like me who can afford it should pay it. It should be merged with income tax and make tax simpler. Regardless of what you think it is for, it is just another tax now.
I do however agree with you on the state pension. The state pension should be more generous to benefit those less well off and higher proportion clawed back for the more well off. Combining NI with tax helps do that.
You can though only now claim JSA if you have made sufficient NI contributions, otherwise you have to go on universal credit.
Eligibility for the state pension is also dependent on NI contributions or credits
I can't immediately see a reason why "sufficient NI contributions" can't be replaced by "sufficient income tax contributions".
Inflation falling and this is without the drop in petrol prices from ~160p to ~150p and expected to fall to ~140p by the end of this month. We could see the headline rate fall quite a lot faster than is being forecast just because of base effects
Diesel is not dropping as fast , cost me £118 to fill up at weekend.
Even there though Malcolm (and the differential between petrol and diesel has never been anything like this) the rate has come down a few pence over the last couple of months and is definitely no longer rising. Still bloody expensive though.
Yes down below 180 a litre now at least but just seems to be grifting to charge close to 30p a litre more than petrol.
I've seen a reasonably persuasive analysis that garages are making less margin on diesel than petrol as there's less refining capacity for it here. But if that's true, some temporary tax changes could be called for - diesel prices fuel inflation more than petrol because pretty much all logistics runs on diesel.
Tricky one. Diesel was pushed by governments (both Labour and coalition) as it was seen as good for fighting climate change, but now it's seen as bad because it's bad for air quality.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
One time bomb that has been missed. Many people are heading for a shit pension. In the past, quite a few of them would have at least owned their home, outright, at retirement. This number has dropped substantially. And will carry on dropping.
Without housing costs, you can live on very little. Given the nosebleed rents that some are paying I can’t see what they will do when they retire and aren’t on a pension providing about 80% of their salary…
Inflation falling and this is without the drop in petrol prices from ~160p to ~150p and expected to fall to ~140p by the end of this month. We could see the headline rate fall quite a lot faster than is being forecast just because of base effects
Diesel is not dropping as fast , cost me £118 to fill up at weekend.
Even there though Malcolm (and the differential between petrol and diesel has never been anything like this) the rate has come down a few pence over the last couple of months and is definitely no longer rising. Still bloody expensive though.
Yes down below 180 a litre now at least but just seems to be grifting to charge close to 30p a litre more than petrol.
I've seen a reasonably persuasive analysis that garages are making less margin on diesel than petrol as there's less refining capacity for it here. But if that's true, some temporary tax changes could be called for - diesel prices fuel inflation more than petrol because pretty much all logistics runs on diesel.
Tricky one. Diesel was pushed by governments (both Labour and coalition) as it was seen as good for fighting climate change, but now it's seen as bad because it's bad for air quality.
This is why the tax changes would have to be temporary - people are disproportionately suffering for making the choices they were encouraged to. And the logistics industry that everyone relies on doesn't yet have much of a choice.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
First dusting of snow today in south Devon for ages.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Minus 4 for me, on the M1 at Northampton, about to come off the motorway and head cross-country to Rutland.
Inflation falling and this is without the drop in petrol prices from ~160p to ~150p and expected to fall to ~140p by the end of this month. We could see the headline rate fall quite a lot faster than is being forecast just because of base effects
Diesel is not dropping as fast , cost me £118 to fill up at weekend.
Even there though Malcolm (and the differential between petrol and diesel has never been anything like this) the rate has come down a few pence over the last couple of months and is definitely no longer rising. Still bloody expensive though.
Yes down below 180 a litre now at least but just seems to be grifting to charge close to 30p a litre more than petrol.
I've seen a reasonably persuasive analysis that garages are making less margin on diesel than petrol as there's less refining capacity for it here. But if that's true, some temporary tax changes could be called for - diesel prices fuel inflation more than petrol because pretty much all logistics runs on diesel.
Tricky one. Diesel was pushed by governments (both Labour and coalition) as it was seen as good for fighting climate change, but now it's seen as bad because it's bad for air quality.
This is why the tax changes would have to be temporary - people are disproportionately suffering for making the choices they were encouraged to. And the logistics industry that everyone relies on doesn't yet have much of a choice.
The single biggest action the government could have taken to curb inflation (and all the index-linked costs associated with it), would have been to make a dramatic but temporary cut in fuel duty, as the price spiked in March. Petrol and especially diesel prices, feed in to the cost of everything, and have very inelestic demand curves.
Sky reporting fatalities in the channel with more than 40 people on a small boat
All rescue services deployed including RNLI and helicopters
Near Dungeness
Terrible news
The person(s) who sent a bunch of people across the Channel in this weather in a small boat, without providing everyone with a survival suit, should be charged with manslaughter.
Sky reporting fatalities in the channel with more than 40 people on a small boat
All rescue services deployed including RNLI and helicopters
Near Dungeness
Terrible news
The person(s) who sent a bunch of people across the Channel in this weather in a small boat, without providing everyone with a survival suit, should be charged with manslaughter.
Sky suggesting boat capsized in minus 4 degrees approx 5 miles from Dungeness circa 4.00am
Inflation falling and this is without the drop in petrol prices from ~160p to ~150p and expected to fall to ~140p by the end of this month. We could see the headline rate fall quite a lot faster than is being forecast just because of base effects
Diesel is not dropping as fast , cost me £118 to fill up at weekend.
Even there though Malcolm (and the differential between petrol and diesel has never been anything like this) the rate has come down a few pence over the last couple of months and is definitely no longer rising. Still bloody expensive though.
Yes down below 180 a litre now at least but just seems to be grifting to charge close to 30p a litre more than petrol.
I've seen a reasonably persuasive analysis that garages are making less margin on diesel than petrol as there's less refining capacity for it here. But if that's true, some temporary tax changes could be called for - diesel prices fuel inflation more than petrol because pretty much all logistics runs on diesel.
Tricky one. Diesel was pushed by governments (both Labour and coalition) as it was seen as good for fighting climate change, but now it's seen as bad because it's bad for air quality.
This is why the tax changes would have to be temporary - people are disproportionately suffering for making the choices they were encouraged to. And the logistics industry that everyone relies on doesn't yet have much of a choice.
The single biggest action the government could have taken to curb inflation (and all the index-linked costs associated with it), would have been to make a dramatic but temporary cut in fuel duty, as the price spiked in March. Petrol and especially diesel prices, feed in to the cost of everything, and have very inelestic demand curves.
I've long, long argued that the taxation on fuel should be reworked to be (in effect) a flat tax. Say 70% on top of the price of the fuel. Yes, I know it's a bit of a complex pile of taxes - but still could be done. So if the price of petrol goes up by 1p, the price only goes up by 1p.
Yes, the treasury loses a tax windfall. But when prices fall, they don't get a tax "gap" either.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
One time bomb that has been missed. Many people are heading for a shit pension. In the past, quite a few of them would have at least owned their home, outright, at retirement. This number has dropped substantially. And will carry on dropping.
Without housing costs, you can live on very little. Given the nosebleed rents that some are paying I can’t see what they will do when they retire and aren’t on a pension providing about 80% of their salary…
80% of salary? Very difficult, unless perhaps one had paid in a great deal of extra money. Surely tou mean, after tax and NI.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Minus 10, but Sunny!, up here in West Central Scotland.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
One time bomb that has been missed. Many people are heading for a shit pension. In the past, quite a few of them would have at least owned their home, outright, at retirement. This number has dropped substantially. And will carry on dropping.
Without housing costs, you can live on very little. Given the nosebleed rents that some are paying I can’t see what they will do when they retire and aren’t on a pension providing about 80% of their salary…
80% of salary? Very difficult, unless perhaps one had paid in a great deal of extra money. Surely tou mean, after tax and NI.
Yes - it is essentially impossible.
Which was my point - you have people who are working to pay the rent, with a bit of money left over for food etc. When they stop working, their pension won't cover the rent.
Like everyone else I have no idea what the result of the next GE will be, but I share Mike Smithson's doubts about a 50% chance of a Labour majority.
Assuming this means 325/326 seats Labour have to gain, net, about 125 seats.
Look at the target list, eliminate the SNP ones on the assumption they won't change, assume some bumpiness in UNS and you have to look as far as the 150th (approx) winnable seat (using current boundaries as a proxy for if they have changed).
Sky reporting fatalities in the channel with more than 40 people on a small boat
All rescue services deployed including RNLI and helicopters
Near Dungeness
Terrible news
The person(s) who sent a bunch of people across the Channel in this weather in a small boat, without providing everyone with a survival suit, should be charged with manslaughter.
Sky suggesting boat capsized in minus 4 degrees approx 5 miles from Dungeness circa 4.00am
Some good news for Labour: it looks like the Boundary Commission is going to create two new safe Labour seats in London — Stratford & Bow, and Lambeth Central.
Before The Truss Event the argument Mike makes about Tory 2019 don't knows was the argument I was making.
But I think that The Truss Event broke a fundamental basic contract* that the British people have with their politicians. Most of the time most of the people really don't want to have to think about politics. Politics is for politicians. The people trust them not to fuck it up so badly** that they have to pay attention. The Tories failed on that most basic fundamental level with The Truss Event.
The Tories will not be given another chance to repeat the mistake straight away.
* The other obvious part of this is, "Don't Make Us Tell You Twice." Thus Winchester 1997 and 2019GE.
** People expect politicians to make a mess of things, but on an ordinary mundane level, rather than on the epoch-defining set records level that Truss and Kwarteng achieved.
A vignette from hybrid working land: Beautiful journey into work this morning. Air painfully cold, but beautiful. I walk to the tram stop - it'll take a good ten minutes to defrost the car. Marvelling at the hardiness of the guys at the garage who are seemingly immune to it. Pleasant tram ride in to town. Sun rising over Sale Water Park, orange light glittering off the ice and frost. Great Jackson Street Towers shining in the blazing dawn. Tram not as busy as late - even got a seat. Got into work to find it alarmingly quiet - Wednesday is one of our team days in the office - had I missed something major? No, just turns out that with the mix of tram strikes and the bug which is going round after the work do last week, 95% of the team are either off sick or working from home. So why am I here? At least it's warm and there is no background noise of builders. Phone call from the wife - what had I done with her laptop? Had I brought it to work with me? She's been looking for it for 25 minutes. Thankfully, no, I hadn't. But I had had it last night. In my partial defence, she'd asked me to bring it to her for some Christmas-related purpose. However, I have no idea what I then did with it. Happily, it turned up with the cook books behind the fruit bowl (where fruit is only an occasional lodger among wires for charging electronic devices). I have no defence for that, save that domestic life is largely one long process of carrying items around the house, some of which make it to their intended destination before the next item demands to be moved. Anyway, she found it, and I haven't taken it to work, so phew. Suddenly realise I was meant to take the car to the garage for its MOT. Bugger. Happily, the wife is at home - I can ask her to do it. I wish though that I hadn't already cost her 30 minutes of her day hunting for her laptop behind the fruit bowl.
Like everyone else I have no idea what the result of the next GE will be, but I share Mike Smithson's doubts about a 50% chance of a Labour majority.
Assuming this means 325/326 seats Labour have to gain, net, about 125 seats.
Look at the target list, eliminate the SNP ones on the assumption they won't change, assume some bumpiness in UNS and you have to look as far as the 150th (approx) winnable seat (using current boundaries as a proxy for if they have changed).
Then ask: Can they win those?
Eg Bromley and Chislehurst Basingstoke Hexham.
Yes. But not a 50% chance
Extraordinary actions lead to extraordinary reactions.
We've never had a general election before where the government party was forced to replace the Prime Minister after only seven weeks because she had been so catastrophically bad at the job.
We should expect this to lead to a general election result that stretches credulity.
The decline in living standards is similarly unprecedented.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
I agree with you and am one of those pushing for NI to be paid by everyone in work irrespective of age. But you are being unfair or disingenuous in your attack on Malcolm. Throughout the discussions this morning everyone has been making a distinction between tax and NI and Malcolm is clearly referring to the tax element rather than the NI element. It is an accepted language we use in these discussions even if we think the system is wrong.
So to say he is living in a fantasy world is uncalled for.
I am happy to apologise when I get it wrong but not having trawled through the whole thread I based my comments on what Malcolm said, namely "pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else".
In my book anyone who thinks NI is not a tax is living in a fantasy world.
He was replying to a specific comment that said
"The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band)."
There is no way that could be read as referring to NI. You are wrong on this and should be big enough to admit it.
Yes but he replied with a statement that is false; pensioners do not pay the same tax as everyone else.
I did make one mistake though: Pensioners pay 12% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa (not 13.25% as I said). My bad.
You got evidence of that, because I certainly don't. Assum eyou are still confused as to what tax on income is compared to a NI charge. Why not whine about them getting a bus pass Scrooge.
Like everyone else I have no idea what the result of the next GE will be, but I share Mike Smithson's doubts about a 50% chance of a Labour majority.
Assuming this means 325/326 seats Labour have to gain, net, about 125 seats.
Look at the target list, eliminate the SNP ones on the assumption they won't change, assume some bumpiness in UNS and you have to look as far as the 150th (approx) winnable seat (using current boundaries as a proxy for if they have changed).
Then ask: Can they win those?
Eg Bromley and Chislehurst Basingstoke Hexham.
Yes. But not a 50% chance
If Starmer matches Blair's 1997 gains he gets a majority of about 50.
If he only matches Cameron's 2010 gains it is a hung parliament with Labour largest party
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
The problem with regarding NI as a a tax - which it is, of course, in one, real, sense - is that it is explicitly treated as a payment in return for which one gets the state pension. So it is also not a tax but an insurance payment. Certainly as it is marketed and deemanded and as the SP paperwork treats it. So, once the need for the insurance payment vanishes, so too does the justification for paying it. If I grow old and give up drivbing and sell my car, I don't have to keep paying the road fund licence fee. How is the ordinary person in the street to think otherwise?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
Carnyx , you can bet that the whiners complaining about NI are all self employed and milking both teh NI and dividends etc , nothing but greed. They would sell their grannies if they could get a few quid out of it.
Like everyone else I have no idea what the result of the next GE will be, but I share Mike Smithson's doubts about a 50% chance of a Labour majority.
Assuming this means 325/326 seats Labour have to gain, net, about 125 seats.
Look at the target list, eliminate the SNP ones on the assumption they won't change, assume some bumpiness in UNS and you have to look as far as the 150th (approx) winnable seat (using current boundaries as a proxy for if they have changed).
Then ask: Can they win those?
Eg Bromley and Chislehurst Basingstoke Hexham.
Yes. But not a 50% chance
Extraordinary actions lead to extraordinary reactions.
We've never had a general election before where the government party was forced to replace the Prime Minister after only seven weeks because she had been so catastrophically bad at the job.
We should expect this to lead to a general election result that stretches credulity.
The decline in living standards is similarly unprecedented.
What you're leaving out is that the opposition is trying to win the election by default. When it comes to a general election, it's a choice of governments not a referendum on the previous government. So it's quite possible that enough people won't trust Sir Keir and his pig in a poke to deprive him of a large majority, and even possibly a majority at all.
A vignette from hybrid working land: Beautiful journey into work this morning. Air painfully cold, but beautiful. I walk to the tram stop - it'll take a good ten minutes to defrost the car. Marvelling at the hardiness of the guys at the garage who are seemingly immune to it. Pleasant tram ride in to town. Sun rising over Sale Water Park, orange light glittering off the ice and frost. Great Jackson Street Towers shining in the blazing dawn. Tram not as busy as late - even got a seat. Got into work to find it alarmingly quiet - Wednesday is one of our team days in the office - had I missed something major? No, just turns out that with the mix of tram strikes and the bug which is going round after the work do last week, 95% of the team are either off sick or working from home. So why am I here? At least it's warm and there is no background noise of builders. Phone call from the wife - what had I done with her laptop? Had I brought it to work with me? She's been looking for it for 25 minutes. Thankfully, no, I hadn't. But I had had it last night. In my partial defence, she'd asked me to bring it to her for some Christmas-related purpose. However, I have no idea what I then did with it. Happily, it turned up with the cook books behind the fruit bowl (where fruit is only an occasional lodger among wires for charging electronic devices). I have no defence for that, save that domestic life is largely one long process of carrying items around the house, some of which make it to their intended destination before the next item demands to be moved. Anyway, she found it, and I haven't taken it to work, so phew. Suddenly realise I was meant to take the car to the garage for its MOT. Bugger. Happily, the wife is at home - I can ask her to do it. I wish though that I hadn't already cost her 30 minutes of her day hunting for her laptop behind the fruit bowl.
A useful trick - I bought a magazine box (thing that goes in a bookshelf to hold a bunch of magazines). The lap tops go in that when they are not in use. Provides a sensible, known location.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
The problem with regarding NI as a a tax - which it is, of course, in one, real, sense - is that it is explicitly treated as a payment in return for which one gets the state pension. So it is also not a tax but an insurance payment. Certainly as it is marketed and deemanded and as the SP paperwork treats it. So, once the need for the insurance payment vanishes, so too does the justification for paying it. If I grow old and give up drivbing and sell my car, I don't have to keep paying the road fund licence fee. How is the ordinary person in the street to think otherwise?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
Carnyx , you can bet that the whiners complaining about NI are all self employed and milking both teh NI and dividends etc , nothing but greed. They would sell their grannies if they could get a few quid out of it.
Selling your granny would be very foolish. You would create a large, onshore tax liability.
The sensible thing to do is create an OTC market in Collateralised Grandparent Obligations, which you sell to Belgian widows* and orphans. The product would be structured so that any tax liability would occur in the Caymans.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
This. Starmer has been very good at selling himself as New Labour without the Blairgasm stuff that led to hubris and Iraq.
Like everyone else I have no idea what the result of the next GE will be, but I share Mike Smithson's doubts about a 50% chance of a Labour majority.
Assuming this means 325/326 seats Labour have to gain, net, about 125 seats.
Look at the target list, eliminate the SNP ones on the assumption they won't change, assume some bumpiness in UNS and you have to look as far as the 150th (approx) winnable seat (using current boundaries as a proxy for if they have changed).
Then ask: Can they win those?
Eg Bromley and Chislehurst Basingstoke Hexham.
Yes. But not a 50% chance
Extraordinary actions lead to extraordinary reactions.
We've never had a general election before where the government party was forced to replace the Prime Minister after only seven weeks because she had been so catastrophically bad at the job.
We should expect this to lead to a general election result that stretches credulity.
The decline in living standards is similarly unprecedented.
What you're leaving out is that the opposition is trying to win the election by default. When it comes to a general election, it's a choice of governments not a referendum on the previous government. So it's quite possible that enough people won't trust Sir Keir and his pig in a poke to deprive him of a large majority, and even possibly a majority at all.
For reasons of space I left out the caveat that it's entirely possible for Starmer and Labour to lose the next election.
But if we assume an average level of competency then I think everything I said stands as a central scenario. It would take an extraordinarily bad performance for the opposition to fail to win a majority. Starmer isn't a great leader, but I don't think he's *that* bad.
A vignette from hybrid working land: Beautiful journey into work this morning. Air painfully cold, but beautiful. I walk to the tram stop - it'll take a good ten minutes to defrost the car. Marvelling at the hardiness of the guys at the garage who are seemingly immune to it. Pleasant tram ride in to town. Sun rising over Sale Water Park, orange light glittering off the ice and frost. Great Jackson Street Towers shining in the blazing dawn. Tram not as busy as late - even got a seat. Got into work to find it alarmingly quiet - Wednesday is one of our team days in the office - had I missed something major? No, just turns out that with the mix of tram strikes and the bug which is going round after the work do last week, 95% of the team are either off sick or working from home. So why am I here? At least it's warm and there is no background noise of builders. Phone call from the wife - what had I done with her laptop? Had I brought it to work with me? She's been looking for it for 25 minutes. Thankfully, no, I hadn't. But I had had it last night. In my partial defence, she'd asked me to bring it to her for some Christmas-related purpose. However, I have no idea what I then did with it. Happily, it turned up with the cook books behind the fruit bowl (where fruit is only an occasional lodger among wires for charging electronic devices). I have no defence for that, save that domestic life is largely one long process of carrying items around the house, some of which make it to their intended destination before the next item demands to be moved. Anyway, she found it, and I haven't taken it to work, so phew. Suddenly realise I was meant to take the car to the garage for its MOT. Bugger. Happily, the wife is at home - I can ask her to do it. I wish though that I hadn't already cost her 30 minutes of her day hunting for her laptop behind the fruit bowl.
A useful trick - I bought a magazine box (thing that goes in a bookshelf to hold a bunch of magazines). The lap tops go in that when they are not in use. Provides a sensible, known location.
Good idea. With a bowl next to them for chargers. (What sort of a world are we living in?! I think in our family of five we have six laptops in operation.)
In fact, at my wife's suggestion, we have recently implemented a similar solution for glasses. I used to spend upwards of 5% of my life hunting for my glasses (my problem is that I will be required to do a non-reading task, like empty the cat litter, which will necessitate me taking off my glasses in an unpredictable place like next to the cat litter tray - then without my glasses I can't see well enough to spot my glasses), as did my middle daughter, who is just as bad at knowing where things are and/or finding things. I'd say in its first fortnight of operation this scheme has saved me at least an hour.
Minus six this morning. Not the best day to have the patio doors replaced but they were 40 plus years old. The two lads doing the work cheerful and being kept going with hot coffee.
Mr Cookie, agree about Starmer. His big advantage is that he looks safe.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
This. Starmer has been very good at selling himself as New Labour without the Blairgasm stuff that led to hubris and Iraq.
It is a much more downbeat appeal from Starmer than Blair in 1997. It would be very hard for Starmer to play D-Ream endlessly singing "Things can only get better".
Optimism gets votes out, and Sunak is better at pitching optimism, albeit one that suggests that things can only get better for financiers, the rest of us will just have the crumbs off their table, and the dregs from their glasses.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
Yes. Unusually at the moment, while it is extremely unclear what Labour stands for, it is much much less clear what the Tory party stands for.
BTW when it comes to betting on majority at GE, the LDs can and might be part of what deprives Lab of a majority; though not depriving them of government.
The sheer unpredictability means that the LDs doing really well in slightly unexpected places can't be excluded from the calculation.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
A vignette from hybrid working land: Beautiful journey into work this morning. Air painfully cold, but beautiful. I walk to the tram stop - it'll take a good ten minutes to defrost the car. Marvelling at the hardiness of the guys at the garage who are seemingly immune to it. Pleasant tram ride in to town. Sun rising over Sale Water Park, orange light glittering off the ice and frost. Great Jackson Street Towers shining in the blazing dawn. Tram not as busy as late - even got a seat. Got into work to find it alarmingly quiet - Wednesday is one of our team days in the office - had I missed something major? No, just turns out that with the mix of tram strikes and the bug which is going round after the work do last week, 95% of the team are either off sick or working from home. So why am I here? At least it's warm and there is no background noise of builders. Phone call from the wife - what had I done with her laptop? Had I brought it to work with me? She's been looking for it for 25 minutes. Thankfully, no, I hadn't. But I had had it last night. In my partial defence, she'd asked me to bring it to her for some Christmas-related purpose. However, I have no idea what I then did with it. Happily, it turned up with the cook books behind the fruit bowl (where fruit is only an occasional lodger among wires for charging electronic devices). I have no defence for that, save that domestic life is largely one long process of carrying items around the house, some of which make it to their intended destination before the next item demands to be moved. Anyway, she found it, and I haven't taken it to work, so phew. Suddenly realise I was meant to take the car to the garage for its MOT. Bugger. Happily, the wife is at home - I can ask her to do it. I wish though that I hadn't already cost her 30 minutes of her day hunting for her laptop behind the fruit bowl.
A useful trick - I bought a magazine box (thing that goes in a bookshelf to hold a bunch of magazines). The lap tops go in that when they are not in use. Provides a sensible, known location.
Good idea. With a bowl next to them for chargers. (What sort of a world are we living in?! I think in our family of five we have six laptops in operation.)
In fact, at my wife's suggestion, we have recently implemented a similar solution for glasses. I used to spend upwards of 5% of my life hunting for my glasses (my problem is that I will be required to do a non-reading task, like empty the cat litter, which will necessitate me taking off my glasses in an unpredictable place like next to the cat litter tray - then without my glasses I can't see well enough to spot my glasses), as did my middle daughter, who is just as bad at knowing where things are and/or finding things. I'd say in its first fortnight of operation this scheme has saved me at least an hour.
Waiting to get the builders in - but in the old flat, had a bookcase with cupboards at the bottom. One cupboard was for the router, server etc. Had power, ethernet in there. Had one of those desk cutouts put it, so all the chargers went in the cupboard, cables coming out of the cut out, to the shelf above. Into the magazine box. So you could plug in and charge while the mobile/table/headphones/etc was stored. All the wires were hidden in the box.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
This. Starmer has been very good at selling himself as New Labour without the Blairgasm stuff that led to hubris and Iraq.
It is a much more downbeat appeal from Starmer than Blair in 1997. It would be very hard for Starmer to play D-Ream endlessly singing "Things can only get better".
Optimism gets votes out, and Sunak is better at pitching optimism, albeit one that suggests that things can only get better for financiers, the rest of us will just have the crumbs off their table, and the dregs from their glasses.
You forgot the Tory Benefit Loungers - who are refusing to work, while luxuriating in vast piles of money in their mansions.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
The problem with regarding NI as a a tax - which it is, of course, in one, real, sense - is that it is explicitly treated as a payment in return for which one gets the state pension. So it is also not a tax but an insurance payment. Certainly as it is marketed and deemanded and as the SP paperwork treats it. So, once the need for the insurance payment vanishes, so too does the justification for paying it. If I grow old and give up drivbing and sell my car, I don't have to keep paying the road fund licence fee. How is the ordinary person in the street to think otherwise?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
The idea that NI is a payment in return for which one gets the state pension is total nonsense, long has been, if not always has been. Its a tax, only a tax, and not an insurance payment.
If someone is unemployed or on benefits then even though they're not working or paying NI, they still get NI credits anyway. You can be unemployed your entire life and still get a pension when you retire, because the state will have registered your NI credits for you anyway still.
You only don't get NI credits if you've opted out of NI, not if you're not working. Eliminate the ability to opt out of NI and the problem goes away.
NI has always been a tax, always will be a tax, and it being called "insurance" is just marketing spin - it is by law and international treaties a tax, nothing else.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
This year was the perfect year to introduce NI on pensioners as well with the triple lock increase covering all of the tax rise for middle income pensioners so only those with £24k+ would be bet worse off.
Any year is a good year to do it because it is the right thing to do.
Out of interest as I don't actually know though I should. Does an employer pay employer's NI if the employee is not paying employee's NI? That would surely skew the job market to some extent as it would make it cheaper to employ pensioners.
Employers pay contributions on employee earnings between £758 and £1048 per month. I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
What I mean is that we know that NI is made up of two elements - employers and employees.
We also know that currently employees do not pay NI after retirement age.
My question is whether employers continue to pay their element of NI after that age or whether that stops at the same time as the employees contribution?
@Gabriel_Pogrund I understand Mohamed Mansour — Egyptian billionaire businessman and former minister under Hosni Mubarak — to be announced as a senior treasurer of the Tory Party. Donors told at reception at National Army Museum on Mon. Wider shakeup of CCHQ treasury be unveiled in due course
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
Too hot is better than too cold - there's more fun to be had with your clothes off.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
The problem with regarding NI as a a tax - which it is, of course, in one, real, sense - is that it is explicitly treated as a payment in return for which one gets the state pension. So it is also not a tax but an insurance payment. Certainly as it is marketed and deemanded and as the SP paperwork treats it. So, once the need for the insurance payment vanishes, so too does the justification for paying it. If I grow old and give up drivbing and sell my car, I don't have to keep paying the road fund licence fee. How is the ordinary person in the street to think otherwise?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
The idea that NI is a payment in return for which one gets the state pension is total nonsense, long has been, if not always has been. Its a tax, only a tax, and not an insurance payment.
If someone is unemployed or on benefits then even though they're not working or paying NI, they still get NI credits anyway. You can be unemployed your entire life and still get a pension when you retire, because the state will have registered your NI credits for you anyway still.
You only don't get NI credits if you've opted out of NI, not if you're not working. Eliminate the ability to opt out of NI and the problem goes away.
NI has always been a tax, always will be a tax, and it being called "insurance" is just marketing spin - it is by law and international treaties a tax, nothing else.
Lucky for us we have Brain of Britain on board, all is clear now. Show me the international treaty where it states UK NI is a tax smartypants.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Spoke too soon. Too cold to lay bricks. Can't work mortar in sub-zero temperatures.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band).
You halfwitted clown, pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else, they get the same tax allowance. Only those on pension credit benefits don't pay tax. How thick can you Tories be.
You are living in a fantasy world of your own making Malcolm.
Pensioners pay 13.25% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa than those in work; they pay 2% less tax on earnings above £50,284 than those earning.
The fact that that tax is called NI doesn't make it any less of a tax.
I agree with you and am one of those pushing for NI to be paid by everyone in work irrespective of age. But you are being unfair or disingenuous in your attack on Malcolm. Throughout the discussions this morning everyone has been making a distinction between tax and NI and Malcolm is clearly referring to the tax element rather than the NI element. It is an accepted language we use in these discussions even if we think the system is wrong.
So to say he is living in a fantasy world is uncalled for.
I am happy to apologise when I get it wrong but not having trawled through the whole thread I based my comments on what Malcolm said, namely "pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else".
In my book anyone who thinks NI is not a tax is living in a fantasy world.
He was replying to a specific comment that said
"The politically feasible solution to achieve what you are getting at, is to just pay them their pensions but take it all back in tax once their income rises above a certain level (possibly the higher tax band)."
There is no way that could be read as referring to NI. You are wrong on this and should be big enough to admit it.
Sorry but with all due respect, Ben is right and you are wrong.
NI is a tax, there is no distinction between tax and NI. Malcolm saying "pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else" is delusional and wrong as a matter of fact, NI is a tax and there is no distinction, anyone who thinks there is absolutely is living in a fantasy world.
Not read entire thread but having used Ctrl+F to search for NI it seems that apart from a comment made by Sandpit, which malcolm wasn't responding, the entire tax/NI discussion began after malcolm's comment not before it so there is no distinction.
Income tax is a tax. National insurance is a tax. Names are just branding, not whether something is a tax or not - the law and international tax treaties and HMRC are absolutely unequivocally clear that NI is a tax.
Some good news for Labour: it looks like the Boundary Commission is going to create two new safe Labour seats in London — Stratford & Bow, and Lambeth Central.
Hardly good news - big majorities piled up in seats they'd win any way has to make it harder elsewhere. A 'win' ios to create seats with moderate majorities surely.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
This is a bit cynical. How about voting for positive reasons?
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
The problem with regarding NI as a a tax - which it is, of course, in one, real, sense - is that it is explicitly treated as a payment in return for which one gets the state pension. So it is also not a tax but an insurance payment. Certainly as it is marketed and deemanded and as the SP paperwork treats it. So, once the need for the insurance payment vanishes, so too does the justification for paying it. If I grow old and give up drivbing and sell my car, I don't have to keep paying the road fund licence fee. How is the ordinary person in the street to think otherwise?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
The idea that NI is a payment in return for which one gets the state pension is total nonsense, long has been, if not always has been. Its a tax, only a tax, and not an insurance payment.
If someone is unemployed or on benefits then even though they're not working or paying NI, they still get NI credits anyway. You can be unemployed your entire life and still get a pension when you retire, because the state will have registered your NI credits for you anyway still.
You only don't get NI credits if you've opted out of NI, not if you're not working. Eliminate the ability to opt out of NI and the problem goes away.
NI has always been a tax, always will be a tax, and it being called "insurance" is just marketing spin - it is by law and international treaties a tax, nothing else.
Lucky for us we have Brain of Britain on board, all is clear now. Show me the international treaty where it states UK NI is a tax smartypants.
When I was paying tax as a US dual national, NI is counted as tax, under the provisions of the treaties involved.
NI I paid in the UK was counted as income tax paid so I wasn't double taxed by the US.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Spoke to soon. Too cold to lay bricks, apparently.
I've been laying some footings on and off last couple of weeks for a retaining wall for a patio (getting a brickie in to actually do the wall). Taking ages for the concrete to go off - managed to keep it all from freezing with layers of plastic as we've only been a few degrees under at night and just about positive in the day - but it's taking upwards of 48 hours to look set and no doubt longer to go off fully.
Not a good time for doing mortar, for sure, which would be harder to protect.
ETA: And the sand is probably frozen if it's sub-zero with you.
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
The problem with regarding NI as a a tax - which it is, of course, in one, real, sense - is that it is explicitly treated as a payment in return for which one gets the state pension. So it is also not a tax but an insurance payment. Certainly as it is marketed and deemanded and as the SP paperwork treats it. So, once the need for the insurance payment vanishes, so too does the justification for paying it. If I grow old and give up drivbing and sell my car, I don't have to keep paying the road fund licence fee. How is the ordinary person in the street to think otherwise?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
The idea that NI is a payment in return for which one gets the state pension is total nonsense, long has been, if not always has been. Its a tax, only a tax, and not an insurance payment.
If someone is unemployed or on benefits then even though they're not working or paying NI, they still get NI credits anyway. You can be unemployed your entire life and still get a pension when you retire, because the state will have registered your NI credits for you anyway still.
You only don't get NI credits if you've opted out of NI, not if you're not working. Eliminate the ability to opt out of NI and the problem goes away.
NI has always been a tax, always will be a tax, and it being called "insurance" is just marketing spin - it is by law and international treaties a tax, nothing else.
Lucky for us we have Brain of Britain on board, all is clear now. Show me the international treaty where it states UK NI is a tax smartypants.
There are a large number of situations where you can qualify for National Insurance Credits if you are not paying National Insurance Contributions. These enable an individual to obtain qualifying years for state pension purposes even if they are not working.
When British special forces raided a family home in Afghanistan in 2012, they killed two young parents and gravely wounded their infant sons.
A BBC investigation has revealed that special forces command didn't refer the incident to military police and it was never investigated, until now. In Afghanistan, a family is still trying to heal.
I don't think Gary Lineker's necessarily an idiot. But it strikes me he's possibly straying well outside his area of expertise here. Is the USA 'extraordinarily' racist? Really? The impression I get is that the USA is rather less racist than the average country (while still being a bit racist) but, unusually, is also hypersensitive to racism or anything which may look like it.
@Gabriel_Pogrund I understand Mohamed Mansour — Egyptian billionaire businessman and former minister under Hosni Mubarak — to be announced as a senior treasurer of the Tory Party. Donors told at reception at National Army Museum on Mon. Wider shakeup of CCHQ treasury be unveiled in due course
What first attracted the Tory party to this "Egyptian billionaire businessman and former minister under Hosni Mubarak"? How big a bribe donation did he make to buy win the position of Conservative Party treasurer and when does he go to the Lords? Does he pay national insurance?
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
Too hot is better than too cold - there's more fun to be had with your clothes off.
You a naturist, Bart?
ETA: A young relative has just started sex ed at school. The other day she said to me: "Uncle S, you know that thing you do with Aunty S sometimes?" Me, after thoughtful pause: "Argue?"
When British special forces raided a family home in Afghanistan in 2012, they killed two young parents and gravely wounded their infant sons.
A BBC investigation has revealed that special forces command didn't refer the incident to military police and it was never investigated, until now. In Afghanistan, a family is still trying to heal.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
Yes. Unusually at the moment, while it is extremely unclear what Labour stands for, it is much much less clear what the Tory party stands for.
BTW when it comes to betting on majority at GE, the LDs can and might be part of what deprives Lab of a majority; though not depriving them of government.
The sheer unpredictability means that the LDs doing really well in slightly unexpected places can't be excluded from the calculation.
I don't think much of the chances of the Tories running an EdM redux campaign at the next GE - "watch out, you might get the SNP"
Because the response to that project fear at this stage is more likely to be "well, let's just make sure that Labour don't need the SNP" than it ever was in 2015.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
This is a bit cynical. How about voting for positive reasons?
That would require at least one party to provide positive reasons to vote for them.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Spoke to soon. Too cold to lay bricks, apparently.
I've been laying some footings on and off last couple of weeks for a retaining wall for a patio (getting a brickie in to actually do the wall). Taking ages for the concrete to go off - managed to keep it all from freezing with layers of plastic as we've only been a few degrees under at night and just about positive in the day - but it's taking upwards of 48 hours to look set and no doubt longer to go off fully.
Not a good time for doing mortar, for sure, which would be harder to protect.
ETA: And the sand is probably frozen if it's sub-zero with you.
Yes - mildly frustrating, but rather a delay than unstable brickwork holding up steels. And I don't get the impression these guys are slackers. (Unlike the scaffolders they subcontracted to, for whom any England match was a reason not to turn up to work for 48 hours - but scaffolders are a breed apart.)
I don't think Gary Lineker's necessarily an idiot. But it strikes me he's possibly straying well outside his area of expertise here. Is the USA 'extraordinarily' racist? Really? The impression I get is that the USA is rather less racist than the average country (while still being a bit racist) but, unusually, is also hypersensitive to racism or anything which may look like it.
It is also the only western white majority nation to have had a non white head of government, along with us and Ireland
When British special forces raided a family home in Afghanistan in 2012, they killed two young parents and gravely wounded their infant sons.
A BBC investigation has revealed that special forces command didn't refer the incident to military police and it was never investigated, until now. In Afghanistan, a family is still trying to heal.
Ah yes, the 'two wrongs == right' argument. Also seen on here regarding the Hussey affair, of course (with the alleged irregularities around Sistah Space). Maybe I'm in a minority, but I have an expectation that the British armed forces should be better exemplars of morality than the Taliban.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
Too hot is better than too cold - there's more fun to be had with your clothes off.
You a naturist, Bart?
ETA: A young relative has just started sex ed at school. The other day she said to me: "Uncle S, you know that thing you do with Aunty S sometimes?" Me, after thoughtful pause: "Argue?"
A friend's daughter was able to deduce with her newly-found knowledge that her parents had bonked precisely three times in their ten years of marriage. To be fair, she might have been right.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
Too hot is better than too cold - there's more fun to be had with your clothes off.
You a naturist, Bart?
ETA: A young relative has just started sex ed at school. The other day she said to me: "Uncle S, you know that thing you do with Aunty S sometimes?" Me, after thoughtful pause: "Argue?"
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Yes. Trouble is, Winter Wonderland looks great through a window but when you get up close and personal with it your extremities get cold.
When British special forces raided a family home in Afghanistan in 2012, they killed two young parents and gravely wounded their infant sons.
A BBC investigation has revealed that special forces command didn't refer the incident to military police and it was never investigated, until now. In Afghanistan, a family is still trying to heal.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
Too hot is better than too cold - there's more fun to be had with your clothes off.
You a naturist, Bart?
ETA: A young relative has just started sex ed at school. The other day she said to me: "Uncle S, you know that thing you do with Aunty S sometimes?" Me, after thoughtful pause: "Argue?"
A friend's daughter was able to deduce with her newly-found knowledge that her parents had bonked precisely three times in their ten years of marriage. To be fair, she might have been right.
Technically, it's only proof that her mother bonked at least three times
When British special forces raided a family home in Afghanistan in 2012, they killed two young parents and gravely wounded their infant sons.
A BBC investigation has revealed that special forces command didn't refer the incident to military police and it was never investigated, until now. In Afghanistan, a family is still trying to heal.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
Too hot is better than too cold - there's more fun to be had with your clothes off.
You a naturist, Bart?
ETA: A young relative has just started sex ed at school. The other day she said to me: "Uncle S, you know that thing you do with Aunty S sometimes?" Me, after thoughtful pause: "Argue?"
When British special forces raided a family home in Afghanistan in 2012, they killed two young parents and gravely wounded their infant sons.
A BBC investigation has revealed that special forces command didn't refer the incident to military police and it was never investigated, until now. In Afghanistan, a family is still trying to heal.
Ah yes, the 'two wrongs == right' argument. Also seen on here regarding the Hussey affair, of course (with the alleged irregularities around Sistah Space). Maybe I'm in a minority, but I have an expectation that the British armed forces should be better exemplars of morality than the Taliban.
The British armed forces lost hundreds dead removing Al Qaeda and trying to ensure Afghans get a democratic future free of the Taliban.
The Afghans accepted the Taliban back bar a few followers of Massoud and didn't show much gratitude for our armed forces sacrifice on their behalf. One or 2 rogue soldiers doesn't change that
It has characteristics of a London overspill new town, whilst also having affluent suburban commuters, and the demographics aren't as unfavourable to the Conservatives as Reading. It also has high employment.
I think votes will leach to both the Liberal Democrats and Labour but not clearly rally to either and so a Conservative hold.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
Too hot is better than too cold - there's more fun to be had with your clothes off.
You a naturist, Bart?
ETA: A young relative has just started sex ed at school. The other day she said to me: "Uncle S, you know that thing you do with Aunty S sometimes?" Me, after thoughtful pause: "Argue?"
A friend's daughter was able to deduce with her newly-found knowledge that her parents had bonked precisely three times in their ten years of marriage. To be fair, she might have been right.
Technically, it's only proof that her mother bonked at least three times
That is why the Jewish faith passes down the distaff line.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
This is a bit cynical. How about voting for positive reasons?
This is what I'll be seeking to do. Tories Out is strong in my breast but there will be some good stuff in the Labour manifesto for me to be enthused about. Plus I'm starting to rate Starmer quite high on the general out of 10 apolitical PMness scale. He's a 7 and climbing. This is excellent after what we've had in recent years.
( Which incidentally seems to contain a rebuke for OGH from the President himself: ...The president has vented to allies about how often his age is mentioned in the press — “You think I don’t know how fucking old I am?” he said to one earlier this year... )
Still very happy with my short Trump position, but I'm beginning to wonder whether Biden's current nomination odds, currently around 1.55 on Betfair Exchange, might also be worth a similar trade.
On topic - the single biggest reason to vote Tory is to keep Labour out. (The reverse is also true). I'd argue that there is less reason for potential Tory voters to want to keep Labour out than any time since 2001. Indeed, for my tastes, there is less reason to want to keep Labour out than any time since long before I could vote. That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
This is a bit cynical. How about voting for positive reasons?
Sorry - it isn't meant to be! Some people do vote for positive reasons, obviously. But I'd say more vote to keep one of the two big parties out. Certainly at the last two elections I prioritised keeping Jeremy Corbyn out over voting for any sort of positive reasons. Part of my point is that shorn of this motivation I am more free to vote for who I like. I'll have to wait and see who I'm offered in 2024. It's all academic (or, looked at another way, all about building for the long term) in Wythenshawe and Sale East anyway - no way it's going to be anyone but Labour this time or next time.
Some good news for Labour: it looks like the Boundary Commission is going to create two new safe Labour seats in London — Stratford & Bow, and Lambeth Central.
Hardly good news - big majorities piled up in seats they'd win any way has to make it harder elsewhere. A 'win' ios to create seats with moderate majorities surely.
There is not even a single Tory councillor now in Lambeth, Newham or Bow. So no chance of any constituency there being anything but Labour anyway
p.s. The Triple Lock is a ridiculous farce and unaffordable. An honest political response would be to peg back pensions more in line with the kind of belt tightening that everyone else, especially the working population, is having to endure.
Will they have the honesty and guts to do it? Will they heck.
The state pension has increased in line with inflation but so has other state benefits and the minimum wage.
State pensioners without a private or final salary pension have an income below the minimum wage let alone the average worker
The problem here is that the state pension, minimum wage, other benefits rise with inflation okay, sounds good.. But public sector workers? No. They get a real terms pay cut. As they have had for most of the last 12 years. This is to the point where many public sector jobs with significant amounts of responsibility, in some cases involving years of education and professional qualifications, that were once respectable jobs are pared back to being paid not much above the minimum wage because they have been frozen for 12 years. Lots of 'frontline' workers are getting £25k. That's pretty much the minimum wage now.
I've made the point a few times that the fundamental problem here, the fundamental injustice is the disparity between how different groups are being treated. If it is the case that there is no money and we need to fix the public finances, then freeze everything.
I think that having pensions across the board rise with inflation when wages are not was wrong. I am more sympathetic to benefit recipients because they already live very close to or even below the breadline and cannot afford to absorb a reduction in real income.
We need to start means testing pensions to some degree. Those who do not have pensions in addition are on very low incomes but those who have pensions, specifically defined benefit pensions (who are nearly all ex public sector now) are not.
But this is of course politically impossible. People think that they have paid for their pensions: they are entitled. And they vote. Boy do they vote.
David, people on benefits get way more than pension money and when they drop off and get put on pension credits they get access to all sorts of money. The pensions are not the issue, they are peanuts and less than half the minimum wage. Anyone suggesting that that is generous ( under £10K per annum ) and should be cut is not right in the head.
The basic state pension is currently £7,376.20 a year, before the inflation increase. I agree it is not a lot. But there are many pensioners to whom this is just sweetie money on top of their personal pensions. Good luck to them too, they have usually paid for these pensions directly or indirectly. But they should not get additional tax reliefs that those who are earning similar sums don't get. That is unconscionable.
What extra allowance are you referring to David? I'm not aware of any additional tax relief.
The old age allowance was abolished in 2016 but you can still claim married couples allowance if one of you was born before 1935: https://www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance. There are also tax reliefs in respect of maintenance paid once you reach retirement age. It is no longer as generous as I thought it was to be honest. Not paying NI is probably the biggest tax differential.
The problem with regarding NI as a a tax - which it is, of course, in one, real, sense - is that it is explicitly treated as a payment in return for which one gets the state pension. So it is also not a tax but an insurance payment. Certainly as it is marketed and deemanded and as the SP paperwork treats it. So, once the need for the insurance payment vanishes, so too does the justification for paying it. If I grow old and give up drivbing and sell my car, I don't have to keep paying the road fund licence fee. How is the ordinary person in the street to think otherwise?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
The idea that NI is a payment in return for which one gets the state pension is total nonsense, long has been, if not always has been. Its a tax, only a tax, and not an insurance payment.
If someone is unemployed or on benefits then even though they're not working or paying NI, they still get NI credits anyway. You can be unemployed your entire life and still get a pension when you retire, because the state will have registered your NI credits for you anyway still.
You only don't get NI credits if you've opted out of NI, not if you're not working. Eliminate the ability to opt out of NI and the problem goes away.
NI has always been a tax, always will be a tax, and it being called "insurance" is just marketing spin - it is by law and international treaties a tax, nothing else.
Lucky for us we have Brain of Britain on board, all is clear now. Show me the international treaty where it states UK NI is a tax smartypants.
As one example under the terms of the US/UK Income Tax Treaty any necessary (not voluntary) NI contributions under PAYE are classed as a tax and recognised as a tax by both HMRC and the IRS. Voluntary contributions are not.
Bloody hell, I knew it would be cold in the UK in December, but wasn’t expecting it to be quite this cold!! I guess seeing family makes up for it, but I can see why I prefer somewhere hotter!
Minus 6 here.
Brrrr - Those 40C days of summer are looking good now, aren't they?
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
We're having our roof replaced at the moment. 40 degrees would probably be better than -7. Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
Too cold is better than too hot - you can always put more clothes on.
Too hot is better than too cold - there's more fun to be had with your clothes off.
You a naturist, Bart?
ETA: A young relative has just started sex ed at school. The other day she said to me: "Uncle S, you know that thing you do with Aunty S sometimes?" Me, after thoughtful pause: "Argue?"
Isn't it more of a collaborative activity ?
Aye, takes two, does an argument.
It can be less gratifying but its certainly possible to do it by yourself, even in an empty room. Argue that is.
Comments
I did make one mistake though: Pensioners pay 12% less tax on income between £12,584 and £50,284 pa (not 13.25% as I said). My bad.
We also know that currently employees do not pay NI after retirement age.
My question is whether employers continue to pay their element of NI after that age or whether that stops at the same time as the employees contribution?
I'm reminded of this by going through my paperwork recently to try and make sense of the effusions of DWP (which does not impress me as a functional and joined-up government dept, but that is another matter).
BTW, and this is not specific to Malcolm, one point that does not seem to be made much on PB is that the payments for self-employed are vastly smaller than those for PAYE employment *on the same income*. I hadn't fully realised this till the chap on the other end noticed I'd been earning relatively small amounts of freelance income - nobody in HMRC had pointed out this was NIable and credit-able (another symptom of the lack of joined up gmt btw).
(At the moment) It is not a question of public sector vs private sector, pay restraint, fairness or productivity. Supply and demand and basic maths overrides all of those.
Keeping public sector wages low is costing the state and taxpayer money, not saving it at all.
Stand by for lots of aggressive questioning from the blue team and "no plans to..." from the red.
Eligibility for the state pension is also dependent on NI contributions or credits
Without housing costs, you can live on very little. Given the nosebleed rents that some are paying I can’t see what they will do when they retire and aren’t on a pension providing about 80% of their salary…
We barely had a frost at all last winter.
Sky reporting fatalities in the channel with more than 40 people on a small boat
All rescue services deployed including RNLI and helicopters
Near Dungeness
Terrible news
Yes, the treasury loses a tax windfall. But when prices fall, they don't get a tax "gap" either.
The current system exaggerates swings in prices.
Which was my point - you have people who are working to pay the rent, with a bit of money left over for food etc. When they stop working, their pension won't cover the rent.
Assuming this means 325/326 seats Labour have to gain, net, about 125 seats.
Look at the target list, eliminate the SNP ones on the assumption they won't change, assume some bumpiness in UNS and you have to look as far as the 150th (approx) winnable seat (using current boundaries as a proxy for if they have changed).
Then ask: Can they win those?
Eg Bromley and Chislehurst
Basingstoke
Hexham.
Yes. But not a 50% chance
But I think that The Truss Event broke a fundamental basic contract* that the British people have with their politicians. Most of the time most of the people really don't want to have to think about politics. Politics is for politicians. The people trust them not to fuck it up so badly** that they have to pay attention. The Tories failed on that most basic fundamental level with The Truss Event.
The Tories will not be given another chance to repeat the mistake straight away.
* The other obvious part of this is, "Don't Make Us Tell You Twice." Thus Winchester 1997 and 2019GE.
** People expect politicians to make a mess of things, but on an ordinary mundane level, rather than on the epoch-defining set records level that Truss and Kwarteng achieved.
Beautiful journey into work this morning. Air painfully cold, but beautiful. I walk to the tram stop - it'll take a good ten minutes to defrost the car. Marvelling at the hardiness of the guys at the garage who are seemingly immune to it. Pleasant tram ride in to town. Sun rising over Sale Water Park, orange light glittering off the ice and frost. Great Jackson Street Towers shining in the blazing dawn. Tram not as busy as late - even got a seat. Got into work to find it alarmingly quiet - Wednesday is one of our team days in the office - had I missed something major? No, just turns out that with the mix of tram strikes and the bug which is going round after the work do last week, 95% of the team are either off sick or working from home. So why am I here? At least it's warm and there is no background noise of builders.
Phone call from the wife - what had I done with her laptop? Had I brought it to work with me? She's been looking for it for 25 minutes. Thankfully, no, I hadn't. But I had had it last night. In my partial defence, she'd asked me to bring it to her for some Christmas-related purpose. However, I have no idea what I then did with it. Happily, it turned up with the cook books behind the fruit bowl (where fruit is only an occasional lodger among wires for charging electronic devices). I have no defence for that, save that domestic life is largely one long process of carrying items around the house, some of which make it to their intended destination before the next item demands to be moved. Anyway, she found it, and I haven't taken it to work, so phew.
Suddenly realise I was meant to take the car to the garage for its MOT. Bugger. Happily, the wife is at home - I can ask her to do it. I wish though that I hadn't already cost her 30 minutes of her day hunting for her laptop behind the fruit bowl.
We've never had a general election before where the government party was forced to replace the Prime Minister after only seven weeks because she had been so catastrophically bad at the job.
We should expect this to lead to a general election result that stretches credulity.
The decline in living standards is similarly unprecedented.
(on topic: I have no big argument with the market atm on Lab majority)
If he only matches Cameron's 2010 gains it is a hung parliament with Labour largest party
That's not to say I'm suddenly all enthusiastic about Labour. I'm still wary of their hard-left core; still suspicious of their constant clamour for more and harder lockdowns during covid, still alarmed by their wokery. But this no longer feels like the core of their offer. I would have crawled over broken glass to cast a vote to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of power. (In fact, I will tell you the lengths I went to keep Corbyn out of power: I voted for a party led by Boris Johnson.) I probably won't vote Labour, but am I motivated enough to vote to keep them out? Probably not.
I therefore don't see don't knows returning to the Tory fold in the way they have in previous elections.
My theory - which I trot out periodically - is that the size of the Tory vote at general elections is highly correlated with the scariness of the Labour Party.
The sensible thing to do is create an OTC market in Collateralised Grandparent Obligations, which you sell to Belgian widows* and orphans. The product would be structured so that any tax liability would occur in the Caymans.
*Yes - exactly.
But if we assume an average level of competency then I think everything I said stands as a central scenario. It would take an extraordinarily bad performance for the opposition to fail to win a majority. Starmer isn't a great leader, but I don't think he's *that* bad.
It is the greatest remaining uncertainty though.
In fact, at my wife's suggestion, we have recently implemented a similar solution for glasses. I used to spend upwards of 5% of my life hunting for my glasses (my problem is that I will be required to do a non-reading task, like empty the cat litter, which will necessitate me taking off my glasses in an unpredictable place like next to the cat litter tray - then without my glasses I can't see well enough to spot my glasses), as did my middle daughter, who is just as bad at knowing where things are and/or finding things. I'd say in its first fortnight of operation this scheme has saved me at least an hour.
Mr Cookie, agree about Starmer. His big advantage is that he looks safe.
Optimism gets votes out, and Sunak is better at pitching optimism, albeit one that suggests that things can only get better for financiers, the rest of us will just have the crumbs off their table, and the dregs from their glasses.
BTW when it comes to betting on majority at GE, the LDs can and might be part of what deprives Lab of a majority; though not depriving them of government.
The sheer unpredictability means that the LDs doing really well in slightly unexpected places can't be excluded from the calculation.
Though having said that, it would almost certainly be too hot for the guys up there to work. It's certainly not too cold for them to work. Tough as teak, they are.
But in general, I rather prefer the cold, fresh sting of -7 to the end-of-times feel of 40 degrees. Days like today - would that it wasn't the run up to Christmas and life is furiously busy - make me want to get my boots on and get out in the frozen fields. Great days to be alive, if not great days to be in an uninsulated house with gas prices astronomical.
If someone is unemployed or on benefits then even though they're not working or paying NI, they still get NI credits anyway. You can be unemployed your entire life and still get a pension when you retire, because the state will have registered your NI credits for you anyway still.
You only don't get NI credits if you've opted out of NI, not if you're not working. Eliminate the ability to opt out of NI and the problem goes away.
NI has always been a tax, always will be a tax, and it being called "insurance" is just marketing spin - it is by law and international treaties a tax, nothing else.
(This PAYE calculator that I use occasionally agrees: https://listentotaxman.com/?year=2022&taxregion=uk&excludeni=true&age=1&time=1&ingr=30000 )
I understand Mohamed Mansour — Egyptian billionaire businessman and former minister under Hosni Mubarak — to be announced as a senior treasurer of the Tory Party. Donors told at reception at National Army Museum on Mon. Wider shakeup of CCHQ treasury be unveiled in due course
https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1602971167551258624
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/usa-is-an-extraordinarily-racist-country-says-gary-lineker-bvn0628cb
NI is a tax, there is no distinction between tax and NI. Malcolm saying "pensioners pay the same tax as anyone else" is delusional and wrong as a matter of fact, NI is a tax and there is no distinction, anyone who thinks there is absolutely is living in a fantasy world.
Not read entire thread but having used Ctrl+F to search for NI it seems that apart from a comment made by Sandpit, which malcolm wasn't responding, the entire tax/NI discussion began after malcolm's comment not before it so there is no distinction.
Income tax is a tax. National insurance is a tax. Names are just branding, not whether something is a tax or not - the law and international tax treaties and HMRC are absolutely unequivocally clear that NI is a tax.
NI I paid in the UK was counted as income tax paid so I wasn't double taxed by the US.
Not a good time for doing mortar, for sure, which would be harder to protect.
ETA: And the sand is probably frozen if it's sub-zero with you.
https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-credits/eligibility
When British special forces raided a family home in Afghanistan in 2012, they killed two young parents and gravely wounded their infant sons.
A BBC investigation has revealed that special forces command didn't refer the incident to military police and it was never investigated, until now. In Afghanistan, a family is still trying to heal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63908301
Is the USA 'extraordinarily' racist? Really? The impression I get is that the USA is rather less racist than the average country (while still being a bit racist) but, unusually, is also hypersensitive to racism or anything which may look like it.
bribedonation did he make tobuywin the position of Conservative Party treasurer and when does he go to the Lords? Does he pay national insurance?ETA: A young relative has just started sex ed at school.
The other day she said to me:
"Uncle S, you know that thing you do with Aunty S sometimes?"
Me, after thoughtful pause:
"Argue?"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/07/taliban-carry-out-first-public-execution-since-taking-over-afghanistan-last-year
Because the response to that project fear at this stage is more likely to be "well, let's just make sure that Labour don't need the SNP" than it ever was in 2015.
And I don't get the impression these guys are slackers. (Unlike the scaffolders they subcontracted to, for whom any England match was a reason not to turn up to work for 48 hours - but scaffolders are a breed apart.)
Some of us expect better.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jk-rowling-trans-sexual-abuse-victims-women-b2244829.html
The Afghans accepted the Taliban back bar a few followers of Massoud and didn't show much gratitude for our armed forces sacrifice on their behalf. One or 2 rogue soldiers doesn't change that
It has characteristics of a London overspill new town, whilst also having affluent suburban commuters, and the demographics aren't as unfavourable to the Conservatives as Reading. It also has high employment.
I think votes will leach to both the Liberal Democrats and Labour but not clearly rally to either and so a Conservative hold.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/13/2024-campaigns-trump-biden-00073548
( Which incidentally seems to contain a rebuke for OGH from the President himself:
...The president has vented to allies about how often his age is mentioned in the press — “You think I don’t know how fucking old I am?” he said to one earlier this year... )
Still very happy with my short Trump position, but I'm beginning to wonder whether Biden's current nomination odds, currently around 1.55 on Betfair Exchange, might also be worth a similar trade.
Certainly at the last two elections I prioritised keeping Jeremy Corbyn out over voting for any sort of positive reasons.
Part of my point is that shorn of this motivation I am more free to vote for who I like.
I'll have to wait and see who I'm offered in 2024.
It's all academic (or, looked at another way, all about building for the long term) in Wythenshawe and Sale East anyway - no way it's going to be anyone but Labour this time or next time.