That the DKs are mainly former Tories is why I am doubtful of Labour's wisdom in attacking public schools. Surely this cohort is unlikely to find this policy attractive on ideological grounds, else they'd already have been voting Labour, whereas those with family at (or intended for) public schools might be tipped back onto the blue pile.
But the key observation might be that private education goes beyond traditional public schools, through tutors who are represented on pb, to ad hoc after-school establishments often based in former shops, which around here are mainly used by the Labour-leaning Asian community, and that is without counting specifically Muslim religious education.
Otoh, last night's Only Connect makes me think you can tell a school is posh if the teachers are called beaks.
Paradoxically, in electoral terms, as well as to end the old school tie domination of many lucrative and influential professions, it might be better for Labour to completely ban private education rather than make it 20 per cent more expensive.
Surely, it’s religious education, which should be banned, at least as a first step!
I missed the part where Starmer proposed banning private education.
Starmer did not propose banning private education. However, I did suggest earlier in this thread that, paradoxically, it might have been better for Labour's electoral chances than merely imposing VAT.
From a manifesto perspective virtually no-one will change their mind to voting Labour if they have a policy to introduce VAT on private schools or even ban them. Those who support charging VAT won't see it as even a top 25 issue. Whereas there will be a significant number who might have voted Labour but would switch to the Tories if they had such a policy as for them it could be a top 3 issue.
If Labour really want to do this, it does not need to be in a manifesto either way, Chancellors tinker with tax all the time.
The interesting thing about Starmer's proposal to tax private education is that a cautious politician sees that as an electoral winner for him. He may be right or he may be wrong, but it's interesting he thinks that.
Oh, I think it's popular - it's a populist policy, particularly for his base.
2) Russia Ukraine War to be an ongoing stalemate, with positions not far from where they were in Jan 2022.
3) President Xi to be deposed in China, and China driving world economic recovery.
4) Biden to announce he will run again. He seems to be enjoying himself. Trump to disappear further down his rabbit hole, and looking unlikely to be the Republican nominee.
4) Musk to step back from Twitter, under threat of losing control of Tesla.
5) UK inflation to drop, but still be 5% by year end. GDP to hover around the zero mark, with neither significant growth nor major recession, buoyed by significant consumer spending. BoE base rate 4.5% at year end.
6) May local elections to be poor for the Tories, but not a wipeout, and lacklustre for Labour. A good night for LibDems and Greens.
7) The most certain of all: NI to remain fossilised in pointless deadlock, with no Stormont government nor real progress on the NIP.
so in effect, no change then...
Er... 3)!
apart from 3....
My thinking is that firstly the anti zero covid protests, then the current chaos will do him in. Nobody likes a strongman who has been exposed as weak. The CCP is ruthless enough to ditch leaders.
I think the people power protests that brought an end to zero covid, then the current chaos leave Xi looking very weak.
Xi Jinping's grasp on power is baffling when he makes mistake after mistake in an environment that generally has low tolerance for failure. There are parallels - I'm not quite sure how they play out - with Leonid Brezhnev.. It seems if you can get control of the committees you're made.
He will be all powerful and omnipotent right up to the moment he loses power when he will lose everything very quickly, up to and including his life.
Good morning all, and a very happy New Year to one and all. At least on a personal basis! The enormous majorities forecast for labour recently were always, surely, unattainable.
What we can hope for, and perhaps reasonably expect, is a higher standard of behaviour of parliamentarians, both inside, and outside the chamber!
Yes, the British polity is increasingly corrupt and self-serving. That story about 1 in 10 Tory peers having donated more than £100k to the party, the PPE fast track, Lord Lebedev of Siberia, Tom Watson's witchhunt getting him ermine and Lying Boris having the taxpayer cover his legal bills - there is so much obviously wrong with politics.
One further prediction. Johnson will get away with a slap on the wrist from the Standards committee, adding to the stench of self serving Tory corruption.
Except the chair of that committee is the recently knighted Chris Bryant, a Labour MP.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
40 years, not 20. We stopped investing in anything after the disasters of the 1970s. Let private industry do the investing, then when they stop investing and start selling it off, enjoy the short term tax revenues / donations to party coffers.
Actually, one thing Starmer could do to help is ban private funding of political parties. The Tories are openly corrupt, but New Labour weren't far behind when it came down to donations. State funding of parties removes the obvious influence of the spiv class who have made it large selling everything off.
Prompt: Generate a ridiculous and absurd conspiracy theory based on Robert smithson, international car park software salesman
Answer: Here is a ridiculous and absurd conspiracy theory based on Robert Smithson, international car park software salesman:
Robert Smithson is more than just an ordinary car park software salesman. In reality, he is actually a high-ranking member of a secret society known as the "Order of the Parking Spot." This society has been around for centuries, and its members are sworn to protect the sacred art of parking.
According to legend, the Order possesses an ancient and powerful artifact known as the "Parking Spot of Power." This artifact has the ability to control the minds of those who park in its presence, and it has been used by the Order to manipulate world events and political leaders for centuries.
Robert Smithson has been tasked with using his position as an international car park software salesman to infiltrate parking garages and other car-related institutions around the world. He is secretly gathering intelligence and recruiting new members to the Order, all while selling software and pretending to be an ordinary salesman.
But little do people know, Robert Smithson and the Order of the Parking Spot are working towards their ultimate goal of global parking domination. They will stop at nothing to achieve this, including silencing or eliminating anyone who stands in their way.
2) Russia Ukraine War to be an ongoing stalemate, with positions not far from where they were in Jan 2022.
3) President Xi to be deposed in China, and China driving world economic recovery.
4) Biden to announce he will run again. He seems to be enjoying himself. Trump to disappear further down his rabbit hole, and looking unlikely to be the Republican nominee.
4) Musk to step back from Twitter, under threat of losing control of Tesla.
5) UK inflation to drop, but still be 5% by year end. GDP to hover around the zero mark, with neither significant growth nor major recession, buoyed by significant consumer spending. BoE base rate 4.5% at year end.
6) May local elections to be poor for the Tories, but not a wipeout, and lacklustre for Labour. A good night for LibDems and Greens.
7) The most certain of all: NI to remain fossilised in pointless deadlock, with no Stormont government nor real progress on the NIP.
Some good ones there. Here’s mine – all specific and auditable, presented in reverse order of confidence, super-speculative through to stone cold certs:
House prices fall by 16.5% Murray makes the semis at Wimbledon The Ukraine war ends Oasis reform Trump withdraws from the GOP race No general election No Con lead in the polls It rains in April Morris Dancer doesn't use the Quote button
Yes if Sunak wins back DKs and some RefUK voters he could get a hung parliament yet.
Starmer has to rule out the single market and customs union to win back the redwall seats without which he can't become PM
He will rule it out and then do it once in office.
Thank goodness you are as you claim "not partisan" but instead someone who simply sees clearly through the lies of non-Conservative charlatans.
To be fair to CR that does not seem like an unreasonable prediction, although I suspect any statements will be a lot woollier than rule it in or out.
I doubt the UK will be in the EU, Single Market or Customs Union any time soon. Not because of Starmer's untrustworthiness or wooliness, but because it requires the EU to agree new treaaties, when they have zero appetite to reopen negotiations on the TCA and NIP and they would be long drawn out if they did start.
It's actually easier for the UK to go back to FoM because that can be done within the visa regimes of each party. It might actually happen once people recognise the debilitating and now largely unavoidable costs of Brexit.
I think it sort of depends.
FoM is easy (and probably will be tmost popular with Starmer's base) but will obviously respike EU immigration to the UK - not that it's particularly low anyway, but still.
CU is relatively straightforward but would cut across the Auz/NZ trade deals and TPP in play, and maybe some of the carry over agreements as tweaked too, so would take longer - maybe a mutual "customs arrangement" would be easier. It also would also be a way to resolve the NIP (and it wouldn't surprise me if the EU simply stall and talk out the clock, waiting for Labour, on that now).
Single market is the hardest because it involves a large and complex regulatory regime, and dynamic alignment, so I'd expect instead a sector by sector approach to that.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
Simple example on HS2 - because they can’t estimate the benefits of local services running on the east coast and midland mainlines the economic benefit used in the models was zero.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
That the DKs are mainly former Tories is why I am doubtful of Labour's wisdom in attacking public schools. Surely this cohort is unlikely to find this policy attractive on ideological grounds, else they'd already have been voting Labour, whereas those with family at (or intended for) public schools might be tipped back onto the blue pile.
But the key observation might be that private education goes beyond traditional public schools, through tutors who are represented on pb, to ad hoc after-school establishments often based in former shops, which around here are mainly used by the Labour-leaning Asian community, and that is without counting specifically Muslim religious education.
Otoh, last night's Only Connect makes me think you can tell a school is posh if the teachers are called beaks.
Paradoxically, in electoral terms, as well as to end the old school tie domination of many lucrative and influential professions, it might be better for Labour to completely ban private education rather than make it 20 per cent more expensive.
Surely, it’s religious education, which should be banned, at least as a first step!
I missed the part where Starmer proposed banning private education.
Starmer did not propose banning private education. However, I did suggest earlier in this thread that, paradoxically, it might have been better for Labour's electoral chances than merely imposing VAT.
From a manifesto perspective virtually no-one will change their mind to voting Labour if they have a policy to introduce VAT on private schools or even ban them. Those who support charging VAT won't see it as even a top 25 issue. Whereas there will be a significant number who might have voted Labour but would switch to the Tories if they had such a policy as for them it could be a top 3 issue.
If Labour really want to do this, it does not need to be in a manifesto either way, Chancellors tinker with tax all the time.
The interesting thing about Starmer's proposal to tax private education is that a cautious politician sees that as an electoral winner for him. He may be right or he may be wrong, but it's interesting he thinks that.
Oh, I think it's popular - it's a populist policy, particularly for his base.
We see that on here.
It would be very popular amongst 2019 first time Tories as well.
Yes if Sunak wins back DKs and some RefUK voters he could get a hung parliament yet.
Starmer has to rule out the single market and customs union to win back the redwall seats without which he can't become PM
He will rule it out and then do it once in office.
Thank goodness you are as you claim "not partisan" but instead someone who simply sees clearly through the lies of non-Conservative charlatans.
Yes, I could be wrong, but it's my considered view. I note that some of your fellow riders also accept this and think Starmer will say "now we've taken a look at the books; it's much worse than we thought" as the reason for acting differently once in office.
But maybe you'd prefer if I didn't critique Starmer or Labour at all and just talked about how brilliant they are.
Although I agree with you, just to clarify 'your fellow riders' comment; although I often agree with Mexicanpete I should make it clear I am not a Labour voter and never have been, not once in 68 years, and to be honest I hadn't even thought what Mexicanpete's affiliation was when I made the comment. I do appreciate though that my politics are also different to yours and that I believe we were both agreeing because it is our view on how politicians play politics in general ie cynical.
Yes if Sunak wins back DKs and some RefUK voters he could get a hung parliament yet.
Starmer has to rule out the single market and customs union to win back the redwall seats without which he can't become PM
He will rule it out and then do it once in office.
Thank goodness you are as you claim "not partisan" but instead someone who simply sees clearly through the lies of non-Conservative charlatans.
To be fair to CR that does not seem like an unreasonable prediction, although I suspect any statements will be a lot woollier than rule it in or out.
I doubt the UK will be in the EU, Single Market or Customs Union any time soon. Not because of Starmer's untrustworthiness or wooliness, but because it requires the EU to agree new treaaties, when they have zero appetite to reopen negotiations on the TCA and NIP and they would be long drawn out if they did start.
It's actually easier for the UK to go back to FoM because that can be done within the visa regimes of each party. It might actually happen once people recognise the debilitating and now largely unavoidable costs of Brexit.
Forget the EU, that ship has sailed. The two points of interest are the things which are not EU and thus not voted on in 2016: CU and EEA. I doubt we will even ask to join either. But we remain buffered up at the front of both being propelled along by them. So changing the relationship so that we accept this is a political challenge rather than diplomatic.
We are not going to sign any major trade deals as counterparties either aren't interested (US) or will fuck us harder than a "stepmom" on you know where (Australia). Most of the New Truss Trade Deals rolled over the existing EU - Counterparty deal to continue applying to the UK.
So we don't rejoin the CU but do a customs deal like Turkey has. We don't rejoin the EEA but mutually recognise that we remain dynamically aligned and drop the barriers. We don't allow free movement, but we open the door to people who want to come here to work in the jobs that we can't fill. That will be the Starmer compromise. Fulfilling Brexit - we left the EU - and working to deliver the benefits of Brexit by not crippling the economy as the Tory brexiteers have done.
I don't think any reopening of the TCA or NIP is realistic in a ten year timeframe, which would rule out a customs union/deal and dynamic alignment agreed by the EU. I agree there are some useful unilateral things the UK can do (drop the NIP Bill, Retained EU regulation, retain CEE mark, outsource chemicals regulation to EU REACH as the Swiss do), and there are probably some non-TCA related arrangements it could sign up to, implement or improve (Erasmus, Horizon, Single Energy Market, maybe a veterinary agreement)
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
Simple example on HS2 - because they can’t estimate the benefits of local services running on the east coast and midland mainlines the economic benefit used in the models was zero.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
Yes, let's give it to the government. They always deliver complex and demanding projects cheaply, efficiently and on time.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Happy New Year Taz. They ought to tell the greedy feckers where to stick their reparations and get a life or get it from their own relatives that captured and sold them in the first place. Total and utter crap.
I think Leon has been prompting ChatGPT so much its algorithms are starting to mimic him:
It looks like Medvedev has also been spending a bit of time on the old ChatGPT
Write an absurd and highly unlikely list of global predictions for 2023 as if written in a geopolitical commentator’s blog:
“In a shocking turn of events, North Korea and South Korea reunify and become the "Korean Superstate," with Kim Jong-un as its undisputed leader.
The United States and Russia form an unlikely alliance, with the two countries jointly leading a mission to colonize Mars.
The European Union collapses, and all member countries revert back to their pre-EU national identities.
China experiences a widespread technological malfunction, causing all of its advanced systems to shut down for a period of three months.
The United Nations is disbanded, and a new global governing body called the "World Council" is formed in its place.
The world's oceans rise by 20 feet, flooding coastal cities and leading to mass migration inland.
A new highly contagious and deadly virus emerges, killing millions before a cure is found.
The world's economy collapses, leading to widespread poverty and civil unrest. In a surprising move, Canada becomes a superpower, with its advanced healthcare and education systems propelling it to the top of the global rankings.
Aliens make contact with Earth, and it is revealed that they have been secretly observing humanity for centuries.
It's a slightly amusing notion - the Undecideds riding over the horizon to rescue the beleaguered Conservatives and ensure Rishi Sunak gets his re-election (or election in his case).
There seem two inherent assumptions - first, the Don't Knows will actually turn out on the day and second, when they do they will rush like an electoral tsunami to the Blue Team.
It would be good to see any comparable data from 1995-97. Were the big Labour leads under Blair predicated on an avalanche (different metaphor, it is 2023) of disillusioned Conservatives moving to Don't Know/Won't Say and staying there?
It also probably helps Labour for there to be doubt - that encourages and motivates their supporters and gets them to vote whereas the complacency of victory leads to abstention.
Still, there is a salient point - Starmer has not, to use the euphemism, "sealed the deal" with many former Conservative voters. It may be so far he's not needed to - no point interrupting your enemy when he is making mistake after mistake. The two points I would suggest are first, a clear, concise and costed policy programme with the headlines from summer of this year onward. There's an opportunity to build a narrative around what a Labour Government would and above all wouldn't do. To re-assure the wavering Conservative means giving them nothing to worry about.
The second aspect is discipline - successful parties are disciplined parties. The Conservatives have shown in the past 12 months of what an ill-disciplined rabble is capable. Labour needs to ensure everything on social media, every speech, every interview is focused on winning the next election and getting a Labour Government elected. That means not banging on about "culture wars" or peripheral issues but concentrating on what they call "pocket book" matters in the US.
It's Still The Economy, Stupid - as someone might still opine.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
2) Russia Ukraine War to be an ongoing stalemate, with positions not far from where they were in Jan 2022.
3) President Xi to be deposed in China, and China driving world economic recovery.
4) Biden to announce he will run again. He seems to be enjoying himself. Trump to disappear further down his rabbit hole, and looking unlikely to be the Republican nominee.
4) Musk to step back from Twitter, under threat of losing control of Tesla.
5) UK inflation to drop, but still be 5% by year end. GDP to hover around the zero mark, with neither significant growth nor major recession, buoyed by significant consumer spending. BoE base rate 4.5% at year end.
6) May local elections to be poor for the Tories, but not a wipeout, and lacklustre for Labour. A good night for LibDems and Greens.
7) The most certain of all: NI to remain fossilised in pointless deadlock, with no Stormont government nor real progress on the NIP.
so in effect, no change then...
Er... 3)!
apart from 3....
My thinking is that firstly the anti zero covid protests, then the current chaos will do him in. Nobody likes a strongman who has been exposed as weak. The CCP is ruthless enough to ditch leaders.
I think the people power protests that brought an end to zero covid, then the current chaos leave Xi looking very weak.
Xi Jinping's grasp on power is baffling when he makes mistake after mistake in an environment that generally has low tolerance for failure. There are parallels - I'm not quite sure how they play out - with Leonid Brezhnev.. It seems if you can get control of the committees you're made.
He will be all powerful and omnipotent right up to the moment he loses power when he will lose everything very quickly, up to and including his life.
CCP protocol seems to tend towards the men in dark suits quietly tapping someone on the shoulder and encouraging them to retire.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
This is the British disease. We've always been innovators. But stopped being capitalists and got swept along by 80s-style spivism. Why invest in something ourselves and take the risk when we can sell it to someone else and take the reward?
If Labour want something chunky to get their teeth into, it's this. We need to start being capitalists again, and as the Tories aren't capable of saying no to their spiv patrons then it falls onto Labour to rebuild our economic way of life.
It would be the work of generations. Not sure how we do it. British business (not just government) bought into the US paradigm that you focus on your core capability and divest or outsource everything else. Except we went a bit further and divested or outsourced half our core capabilities too.
Make us a better place for entrepreneurs and small businesses than the US or the EU:
- low taxes (especially corporate and payroll) combined with low spending - scrap useless or damaging regulations (mnimum wage, Net Zero, modern slavery statements etc. etc. etc.) - greatly relax the planning system - end subsidies to failing businesses and regions such as Northern Ireland
That's how we start being capitalists again, and what a Conservative government with a majority of 70+ should be doing.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
Simple example on HS2 - because they can’t estimate the benefits of local services running on the east coast and midland mainlines the economic benefit used in the models was zero.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
Yes, let's give it to the government. They always deliver complex and demanding projects cheaply, efficiently and on time.
No, you give the risk to the government but the government outsources the actual work. \ It’s the diamond studded gold plating on the hs2 contract that makes it’s so blooming expensive. It could have been done for a lot less if the government had accepted some of the risks especially the longer term ones.
Yes if Sunak wins back DKs and some RefUK voters he could get a hung parliament yet.
Starmer has to rule out the single market and customs union to win back the redwall seats without which he can't become PM
He will rule it out and then do it once in office.
Alternatively, he'll follow the public (about 2/3 of the way back) rather then leading. Undignified, but necessary given his history.
We're currently at about 1/3 of the public thinking this whole Brexit thing is a good idea. The numbers might stick there, or they might continue to drift down. But there is a threshold where the question can't be avoided any more. What's unclear is where that threshold is.
I think the sweet spot is what it's always been: public opinion favours a common market but not political union or the euro.
I think Leon has been prompting ChatGPT so much its algorithms are starting to mimic him:
It looks like Medvedev has also been spending a bit of time on the old ChatGPT
Write an absurd and highly unlikely list of global predictions for 2023 as if written in a geopolitical commentator’s blog:
“In a shocking turn of events, North Korea and South Korea reunify and become the "Korean Superstate," with Kim Jong-un as its undisputed leader.
The United States and Russia form an unlikely alliance, with the two countries jointly leading a mission to colonize Mars.
The European Union collapses, and all member countries revert back to their pre-EU national identities.
China experiences a widespread technological malfunction, causing all of its advanced systems to shut down for a period of three months.
The United Nations is disbanded, and a new global governing body called the "World Council" is formed in its place.
The world's oceans rise by 20 feet, flooding coastal cities and leading to mass migration inland.
A new highly contagious and deadly virus emerges, killing millions before a cure is found.
The world's economy collapses, leading to widespread poverty and civil unrest. In a surprising move, Canada becomes a superpower, with its advanced healthcare and education systems propelling it to the top of the global rankings.
Aliens make contact with Earth, and it is revealed that they have been secretly observing humanity for centuries.
I asked it for a ridiculous way for the world to end in 2023. It does sound like me on a caffeine high
“Aliens will reveal themselves to be the true rulers of the earth, and they will demand that all humans bow down to them and pledge their loyalty.
The United States will be overtaken by a rebellion led by a group of radical llama farmers, who will establish llama farming as the national economy.
North Korea will develop a weapon that turns people into sentient pickles, and they will use it to take over the world.
A giant, man-eating plant will emerge from the depths of the Amazon rainforest and begin a rampage across South America.
The moon will be revealed to be a giant spaceship, and it will fly away from earth, leaving humanity behind.
All forms of technology will suddenly stop working, and humanity will be forced to return to a pre-industrial society.
The world's oceans will turn to jelly, making it impossible for ships to sail and causing global chaos.
The earth will be struck by a rogue planet, causing the extinction of all life on earth.”
I reckon it comes down to making Brexit work. Rather than making Brexit work. By which I mean an emphasis on the practicalities rather than options automatically discounted because of ideology.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Happy New Year Taz. They ought to tell the greedy feckers where to stick their reparations and get a life or get it from their own relatives that captured and sold them in the first place. Total and utter crap.
I wonder whether there are any other examples of present day grievances expressed by the descendants of 18th century populations sold out to the English by their own countrymen, but anxious to place the blame elsewhere?
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Happy New Year Taz. They ought to tell the greedy feckers where to stick their reparations and get a life or get it from their own relatives that captured and sold them in the first place. Total and utter crap.
I wonder whether there are any other examples of present day grievances expressed by the descendants of 18th century populations sold out to the English by their own countrymen, but anxious to place the blame elsewhere?
Thought it was the 19th century when the Scots highlanders was sold out by their Lowlander fellow citizens?
Yes if Sunak wins back DKs and some RefUK voters he could get a hung parliament yet.
Starmer has to rule out the single market and customs union to win back the redwall seats without which he can't become PM
He will rule it out and then do it once in office.
Thank goodness you are as you claim "not partisan" but instead someone who simply sees clearly through the lies of non-Conservative charlatans.
To be fair to CR that does not seem like an unreasonable prediction, although I suspect any statements will be a lot woollier than rule it in or out.
I doubt the UK will be in the EU, Single Market or Customs Union any time soon. Not because of Starmer's untrustworthiness or wooliness, but because it requires the EU to agree new treaaties, when they have zero appetite to reopen negotiations on the TCA and NIP and they would be long drawn out if they did start.
It's actually easier for the UK to go back to FoM because that can be done within the visa regimes of each party. It might actually happen once people recognise the debilitating and now largely unavoidable costs of Brexit.
The TCA is supposed to be renegotiated every 5 years, so there will be negotiations with the EU in 2025 regardless. Ironically, I think we'll see Starmer negotiate something which looks very similar to May's deal.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Happy New Year Taz. They ought to tell the greedy feckers where to stick their reparations and get a life or get it from their own relatives that captured and sold them in the first place. Total and utter crap.
I wonder whether there are any other examples of present day grievances expressed by the descendants of 18th century populations sold out to the English by their own countrymen, but anxious to place the blame elsewhere?
Thought it was the 19th century when the Scots highlanders was sold out by their Lowlander fellow citizens?
I think the clearance landlords were generally highlanders, but the Act of Union was procured by bribing Scottish MPs - it was largely unwanted otherwise.
Prompt: Generate a ridiculous and absurd conspiracy theory based on Robert smithson, international car park software salesman
Answer: Here is a ridiculous and absurd conspiracy theory based on Robert Smithson, international car park software salesman:
Robert Smithson is more than just an ordinary car park software salesman. In reality, he is actually a high-ranking member of a secret society known as the "Order of the Parking Spot." This society has been around for centuries, and its members are sworn to protect the sacred art of parking.
According to legend, the Order possesses an ancient and powerful artifact known as the "Parking Spot of Power." This artifact has the ability to control the minds of those who park in its presence, and it has been used by the Order to manipulate world events and political leaders for centuries.
Robert Smithson has been tasked with using his position as an international car park software salesman to infiltrate parking garages and other car-related institutions around the world. He is secretly gathering intelligence and recruiting new members to the Order, all while selling software and pretending to be an ordinary salesman.
But little do people know, Robert Smithson and the Order of the Parking Spot are working towards their ultimate goal of global parking domination. They will stop at nothing to achieve this, including silencing or eliminating anyone who stands in their way.
I suggest you go for a walk. For once, it isn't raining outside
I reckon it comes down to making Brexit work. Rather than making Brexit work.
How do you make a car crash work, exactly?
Put a kink in the B pillar with a pry bar so the insurance company has to write it off. Or burn it out using a family size bag of crisps as an accelerant. Both of those have worked for me anyway.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
This is the British disease. We've always been innovators. But stopped being capitalists and got swept along by 80s-style spivism. Why invest in something ourselves and take the risk when we can sell it to someone else and take the reward?
If Labour want something chunky to get their teeth into, it's this. We need to start being capitalists again, and as the Tories aren't capable of saying no to their spiv patrons then it falls onto Labour to rebuild our economic way of life.
It would be the work of generations. Not sure how we do it. British business (not just government) bought into the US paradigm that you focus on your core capability and divest or outsource everything else. Except we went a bit further and divested or outsourced half our core capabilities too.
Make us a better place for entrepreneurs and small businesses than the US or the EU:
- low taxes (especially corporate and payroll) combined with low spending - scrap useless or damaging regulations (mnimum wage, Net Zero, modern slavery statements etc. etc. etc.) - greatly relax the planning system - end subsidies to failing businesses and regions such as Northern Ireland
That's how we start being capitalists again, and what a Conservative government with a majority of 70+ should be doing.
That’s Truss on a page.
Low corporate and payroll taxes: no evidence these have contributed to productivity or growth in other rich countries. There are positive examples and equally positive counter examples. Lots of evidence in developing countries that inability to broaden and deepen the tax base leads to a vicious circle of underinvestment in infrastructure and productivity. Which brings us on to…
Low spending: the state of Britain’s core infrastructure - education in particular, but also transportation, policing, healthcare, local government - is at the point where further underinvestment will really start to put the brakes on productivity.
Minimum wage: in an economy with a surfeit of low paid unproductive jobs and almost full employment the removal of a minimum wage must be the most illogical idea of all. High wages = greater impetus to invest in technology
Net zero: nobble one of the few true growth opportunities for this country, green investment? At a time when our reliance on hydrocarbons is driving record inflation? In any case that ship has sailed, big business is already more ambitious than governments on this. A 20th century solution to 21st century problems.
Modern slavery statements? I can’t say I’ve heard many (any) multinationals moaning about that one.
Relax the planning system: yes. But good luck with the nimbys.
End subsidies to failing businesses and regions. We’ve already been ending subsidies to failing businesses since the end of the furlough scheme. But being careful with whom to prop up and whom not is certainly important. You have to be very good at knowing who the winners and losers will be though. The lack of support to potential winners is why we can’t have all those nice things thd highly industrially subsidised Americans have.
As for regions: well it’s a theory. Certainly makes a change from levelling up. Play to our strengths, ie London. And pay the social and healthcare costs of failure elsewhere.
It's a slightly amusing notion - the Undecideds riding over the horizon to rescue the beleaguered Conservatives and ensure Rishi Sunak gets his re-election (or election in his case).
There seem two inherent assumptions - first, the Don't Knows will actually turn out on the day and second, when they do they will rush like an electoral tsunami to the Blue Team.
It would be good to see any comparable data from 1995-97. Were the big Labour leads under Blair predicated on an avalanche (different metaphor, it is 2023) of disillusioned Conservatives moving to Don't Know/Won't Say and staying there?
It also probably helps Labour for there to be doubt - that encourages and motivates their supporters and gets them to vote whereas the complacency of victory leads to abstention.
Still, there is a salient point - Starmer has not, to use the euphemism, "sealed the deal" with many former Conservative voters. It may be so far he's not needed to - no point interrupting your enemy when he is making mistake after mistake. The two points I would suggest are first, a clear, concise and costed policy programme with the headlines from summer of this year onward. There's an opportunity to build a narrative around what a Labour Government would and above all wouldn't do. To re-assure the wavering Conservative means giving them nothing to worry about.
The second aspect is discipline - successful parties are disciplined parties. The Conservatives have shown in the past 12 months of what an ill-disciplined rabble is capable. Labour needs to ensure everything on social media, every speech, every interview is focused on winning the next election and getting a Labour Government elected. That means not banging on about "culture wars" or peripheral issues but concentrating on what they call "pocket book" matters in the US.
It's Still The Economy, Stupid - as someone might still opine.
To be honest, I think RP is right in insisting that many DKs and Ref UK are pro-Brexit anti-establishment voters and that come polling day they simply won't bother showing up. They're probably not too fond of Starmer, but I don't they have enthusiasm for what Sunak is offering either. With Brexit not changing their circumstance for the better, they'll conclude that engaging in politics (in 2016 and 2019) was a waste of time and not bother getting involved again.
It's a slightly amusing notion - the Undecideds riding over the horizon to rescue the beleaguered Conservatives and ensure Rishi Sunak gets his re-election (or election in his case).
There seem two inherent assumptions - first, the Don't Knows will actually turn out on the day and second, when they do they will rush like an electoral tsunami to the Blue Team.
It would be good to see any comparable data from 1995-97. Were the big Labour leads under Blair predicated on an avalanche (different metaphor, it is 2023) of disillusioned Conservatives moving to Don't Know/Won't Say and staying there?
It also probably helps Labour for there to be doubt - that encourages and motivates their supporters and gets them to vote whereas the complacency of victory leads to abstention.
Still, there is a salient point - Starmer has not, to use the euphemism, "sealed the deal" with many former Conservative voters. It may be so far he's not needed to - no point interrupting your enemy when he is making mistake after mistake. The two points I would suggest are first, a clear, concise and costed policy programme with the headlines from summer of this year onward. There's an opportunity to build a narrative around what a Labour Government would and above all wouldn't do. To re-assure the wavering Conservative means giving them nothing to worry about.
The second aspect is discipline - successful parties are disciplined parties. The Conservatives have shown in the past 12 months of what an ill-disciplined rabble is capable. Labour needs to ensure everything on social media, every speech, every interview is focused on winning the next election and getting a Labour Government elected. That means not banging on about "culture wars" or peripheral issues but concentrating on what they call "pocket book" matters in the US.
It's Still The Economy, Stupid - as someone might still opine.
To be honest, I think RP is right in insisting that many DKs and Ref UK are pro-Brexit anti-establishment voters and that come polling day they simply won't bother showing up. They're probably not too fond of Starmer, but I don't they have enthusiasm for what Sunak is offering either. With Brexit not changing their circumstance for the better, they'll conclude that engaging in politics (in 2016 and 2019) was a waste of time and not bother getting involved again.
What the Tories really need to ensure this disenfranchised group turn up to the polls is to insist on voter ID for the general election.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
That the DKs are mainly former Tories is why I am doubtful of Labour's wisdom in attacking public schools. Surely this cohort is unlikely to find this policy attractive on ideological grounds, else they'd already have been voting Labour, whereas those with family at (or intended for) public schools might be tipped back onto the blue pile.
But the key observation might be that private education goes beyond traditional public schools, through tutors who are represented on pb, to ad hoc after-school establishments often based in former shops, which around here are mainly used by the Labour-leaning Asian community, and that is without counting specifically Muslim religious education.
Otoh, last night's Only Connect makes me think you can tell a school is posh if the teachers are called beaks.
Paradoxically, in electoral terms, as well as to end the old school tie domination of many lucrative and influential professions, it might be better for Labour to completely ban private education rather than make it 20 per cent more expensive.
Surely, it’s religious education, which should be banned, at least as a first step!
That would almost certainly be challenged under Protocol 1, Article 2 of the ECHR.
Quite right too, outrageous to deny parents of faith the chance to send their children to good religious schools.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
Simple example on HS2 - because they can’t estimate the benefits of local services running on the east coast and midland mainlines the economic benefit used in the models was zero.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
Yes, let's give it to the government. They always deliver complex and demanding projects cheaply, efficiently and on time.
What part of "StateCo" do you not understand? The government is the last thing we need messing things up - which the problem with HS2. The private sector would not have created bullshit contracts like the government. But also would not build the thing at its own risk.
Hence a StateCo. Commercially run, but state owned. As works successfully across Europe building HS rail in France, Germany, Spain etc etc etc.
That the DKs are mainly former Tories is why I am doubtful of Labour's wisdom in attacking public schools. Surely this cohort is unlikely to find this policy attractive on ideological grounds, else they'd already have been voting Labour, whereas those with family at (or intended for) public schools might be tipped back onto the blue pile.
But the key observation might be that private education goes beyond traditional public schools, through tutors who are represented on pb, to ad hoc after-school establishments often based in former shops, which around here are mainly used by the Labour-leaning Asian community, and that is without counting specifically Muslim religious education.
Otoh, last night's Only Connect makes me think you can tell a school is posh if the teachers are called beaks.
Paradoxically, in electoral terms, as well as to end the old school tie domination of many lucrative and influential professions, it might be better for Labour to completely ban private education rather than make it 20 per cent more expensive.
Why not ban Waitrose and Marks and Spencers and Mercedes-Benz cars too? We can't have anybody buying anything better than anybody else now can we?
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Places don't carry responsibility for history.
The descendents if Vikings are now all over, with lots in Russia. Insofar as any Roman bloodline survives, you could try asking in Dacia or the Ladino speaking parts of the Alps. Neither Rome nor Denmark will get you very far.
Yes if Sunak wins back DKs and some RefUK voters he could get a hung parliament yet.
Starmer has to rule out the single market and customs union to win back the redwall seats without which he can't become PM
He will rule it out and then do it once in office.
Thank goodness you are as you claim "not partisan" but instead someone who simply sees clearly through the lies of non-Conservative charlatans.
To be fair to CR that does not seem like an unreasonable prediction, although I suspect any statements will be a lot woollier than rule it in or out.
I doubt the UK will be in the EU, Single Market or Customs Union any time soon. Not because of Starmer's untrustworthiness or wooliness, but because it requires the EU to agree new treaaties, when they have zero appetite to reopen negotiations on the TCA and NIP and they would be long drawn out if they did start.
It's actually easier for the UK to go back to FoM because that can be done within the visa regimes of each party. It might actually happen once people recognise the debilitating and now largely unavoidable costs of Brexit.
The TCA is supposed to be renegotiated every 5 years, so there will be negotiations with the EU in 2025 regardless. Ironically, I think we'll see Starmer negotiate something which looks very similar to May's deal.
Even better than May's deal. The Big Problem for May was the backstop. "The EU might imprison us forever!!!!!". Well now that we have tried to swim away and found its economically damaging, its much easier to swim back and say "look how much we've improved things".
Since we're on predictions, the smirking, empathy-free ghost of shit Tory governments past, and a reminder that otherwise (mostly) sane people managed to find justifications to vote for it.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Places don't carry responsibility for history.
The descendents if Vikings are now all over, with lots in Russia. Insofar as any Roman bloodline survives, you could try asking in Dacia or the Ladino speaking parts of the Alps. Neither Rome nor Denmark will get you very far.
It's a slightly amusing notion - the Undecideds riding over the horizon to rescue the beleaguered Conservatives and ensure Rishi Sunak gets his re-election (or election in his case).
There seem two inherent assumptions - first, the Don't Knows will actually turn out on the day and second, when they do they will rush like an electoral tsunami to the Blue Team.
It would be good to see any comparable data from 1995-97. Were the big Labour leads under Blair predicated on an avalanche (different metaphor, it is 2023) of disillusioned Conservatives moving to Don't Know/Won't Say and staying there?
It also probably helps Labour for there to be doubt - that encourages and motivates their supporters and gets them to vote whereas the complacency of victory leads to abstention.
Still, there is a salient point - Starmer has not, to use the euphemism, "sealed the deal" with many former Conservative voters. It may be so far he's not needed to - no point interrupting your enemy when he is making mistake after mistake. The two points I would suggest are first, a clear, concise and costed policy programme with the headlines from summer of this year onward. There's an opportunity to build a narrative around what a Labour Government would and above all wouldn't do. To re-assure the wavering Conservative means giving them nothing to worry about.
The second aspect is discipline - successful parties are disciplined parties. The Conservatives have shown in the past 12 months of what an ill-disciplined rabble is capable. Labour needs to ensure everything on social media, every speech, every interview is focused on winning the next election and getting a Labour Government elected. That means not banging on about "culture wars" or peripheral issues but concentrating on what they call "pocket book" matters in the US.
It's Still The Economy, Stupid - as someone might still opine.
To be honest, I think RP is right in insisting that many DKs and Ref UK are pro-Brexit anti-establishment voters and that come polling day they simply won't bother showing up. They're probably not too fond of Starmer, but I don't they have enthusiasm for what Sunak is offering either. With Brexit not changing their circumstance for the better, they'll conclude that engaging in politics (in 2016 and 2019) was a waste of time and not bother getting involved again.
I saw it on the ground in the red wall. Familiar polling station turnout an voting pattern numbers completely demolished twice - 2016 and 2019. FUKUK or whatever they are called this time are a siren song for the "fruitcakes and loonies" group - seats like Stockton North remained Labour thanks to them shouting Faster HARDER about Brexit. With the Tories in disarray if the Nigel comes out righting then they will do serious Tory damage.
But most of the DNV hordes who appeared in 2019? They didn't vote Labour before so they won't go back there - they didn't vote for anyone. So they now get the Tories have conned them, that proves what they always thought about the point in voting, and that is the last we will see of them.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
Simple example on HS2 - because they can’t estimate the benefits of local services running on the east coast and midland mainlines the economic benefit used in the models was zero.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
Yes, let's give it to the government. They always deliver complex and demanding projects cheaply, efficiently and on time.
What part of "StateCo" do you not understand? The government is the last thing we need messing things up - which the problem with HS2. The private sector would not have created bullshit contracts like the government. But also would not build the thing at its own risk.
Hence a StateCo. Commercially run, but state owned. As works successfully across Europe building HS rail in France, Germany, Spain etc etc etc.
Doesn't matter if it tries to be "commercially run". In practice, that will try to get the best of the government and the best of the private sector, but will end up with the worst of both, as nationalised industries always do, and for blindingly obvious reasons. There is no equivalent in the state-owned sector to bankruptcy or private sector shareholder returns, which impose discipline on private sector managers. Labour relations and contracting are inevitably politicised. And management decisions also often politicised, whatever the original intention is.
Yes if Sunak wins back DKs and some RefUK voters he could get a hung parliament yet.
Starmer has to rule out the single market and customs union to win back the redwall seats without which he can't become PM
He will rule it out and then do it once in office.
Thank goodness you are as you claim "not partisan" but instead someone who simply sees clearly through the lies of non-Conservative charlatans.
To be fair to CR that does not seem like an unreasonable prediction, although I suspect any statements will be a lot woollier than rule it in or out.
I doubt the UK will be in the EU, Single Market or Customs Union any time soon. Not because of Starmer's untrustworthiness or wooliness, but because it requires the EU to agree new treaaties, when they have zero appetite to reopen negotiations on the TCA and NIP and they would be long drawn out if they did start.
It's actually easier for the UK to go back to FoM because that can be done within the visa regimes of each party. It might actually happen once people recognise the debilitating and now largely unavoidable costs of Brexit.
The TCA is supposed to be renegotiated every 5 years, so there will be negotiations with the EU in 2025 regardless. Ironically, I think we'll see Starmer negotiate something which looks very similar to May's deal.
It's a five yearly review of an existing treaty, not the negotiation of a new treaty. Not to say the UK and the EU may eventually end up in a substantially different arrangement but it will be a first principles negotiation and any implementation will be more than ten years hence IMO. There's no appetite for it at the moment.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
I believe there are historical precedents for state capitalism making the trains run on time.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Places don't carry responsibility for history.
The descendents if Vikings are now all over, with lots in Russia. Insofar as any Roman bloodline survives, you could try asking in Dacia or the Ladino speaking parts of the Alps. Neither Rome nor Denmark will get you very far.
They can all be traced if you look hard enough
The trouble with this is that once you get back to Vikings or Romans just about every single person is your ancestor (many times over) and we will all be descended from both slaves and slave owners (the multiple powers of 2 comes into play)
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
I don’t doubt that you can tie a lot of elite wealth in West Africa and the Middle East, and parts of Asia, and a lot of great public buildings there, to slavery. Informally, slaving still exists, in quite a few places.
The only people who should be compensated are ex-slaves. The only people who should pay compensation are human traffickers.
That the DKs are mainly former Tories is why I am doubtful of Labour's wisdom in attacking public schools. Surely this cohort is unlikely to find this policy attractive on ideological grounds, else they'd already have been voting Labour, whereas those with family at (or intended for) public schools might be tipped back onto the blue pile.
But the key observation might be that private education goes beyond traditional public schools, through tutors who are represented on pb, to ad hoc after-school establishments often based in former shops, which around here are mainly used by the Labour-leaning Asian community, and that is without counting specifically Muslim religious education.
Otoh, last night's Only Connect makes me think you can tell a school is posh if the teachers are called beaks.
Paradoxically, in electoral terms, as well as to end the old school tie domination of many lucrative and influential professions, it might be better for Labour to completely ban private education rather than make it 20 per cent more expensive.
Surely, it’s religious education, which should be banned, at least as a first step!
I missed the part where Starmer proposed banning private education.
Starmer did not propose banning private education. However, I did suggest earlier in this thread that, paradoxically, it might have been better for Labour's electoral chances than merely imposing VAT.
From a manifesto perspective virtually no-one will change their mind to voting Labour if they have a policy to introduce VAT on private schools or even ban them. Those who support charging VAT won't see it as even a top 25 issue. Whereas there will be a significant number who might have voted Labour but would switch to the Tories if they had such a policy as for them it could be a top 3 issue.
If Labour really want to do this, it does not need to be in a manifesto either way, Chancellors tinker with tax all the time.
The interesting thing about Starmer's proposal to tax private education is that a cautious politician sees that as an electoral winner for him. He may be right or he may be wrong, but it's interesting he thinks that.
Oh, I think it's popular - it's a populist policy, particularly for his base.
We see that on here.
Starmer doesn’t have a base. That’s what makes him tricky for his opponents to nail down. He’s a day by day, issue by issue guy. In a sense, very Cameronite, actually.
The thing that surprises me is, given his very long and successful career at the CPS / in the legal world, surely he must be brimming with ideas on criminal justice system / legal reforms? But we hear nothing. Maybe he doesn’t want to give any ammunition to his opponents. Scarred by the Johnson/Saville smears.
Keeping his powder dry until he gets into power, and then, bang: we get presented with a raft of well thought through, fundamental reforms.
I just can’t imagine he spent his career not developing a profound critique of the criminal justice system.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
The only traceable inheritance I have from the Vikings is a tendency to a malformation in a tendon in my right hand! I don’t think it’s worth going for compensation for that!
I reckon it comes down to making Brexit work. Rather than making Brexit work.
How do you make a car crash work, exactly?
The honest answer would be “make the best of the post-Brexit situation”.
Absolutely this. Which is why I object to Starmer's "make Brexit work" rhetoric. It patronises people. If you want a positive direction it could be, "As close a relationship with EU and its members as is afforded by the post Brexit arrangements and consistent with the UK interest, given our shared interests and values and the EU being our most important trading market"
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
The traces of the pillage of Lindisfarne Abbey are probably still in Scandinavia today.
Slaves were taken from coastal areas of Britain to end up in wealthy families in North Africa or the old Ottoman Empire well into the 18th century
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
Simple example on HS2 - because they can’t estimate the benefits of local services running on the east coast and midland mainlines the economic benefit used in the models was zero.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
Yes, let's give it to the government. They always deliver complex and demanding projects cheaply, efficiently and on time.
What part of "StateCo" do you not understand? The government is the last thing we need messing things up - which the problem with HS2. The private sector would not have created bullshit contracts like the government. But also would not build the thing at its own risk.
Hence a StateCo. Commercially run, but state owned. As works successfully across Europe building HS rail in France, Germany, Spain etc etc etc.
If HS2 is such a great thing then why can't private investors stump up for it?
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
This is the British disease. We've always been innovators. But stopped being capitalists and got swept along by 80s-style spivism. Why invest in something ourselves and take the risk when we can sell it to someone else and take the reward?
If Labour want something chunky to get their teeth into, it's this. We need to start being capitalists again, and as the Tories aren't capable of saying no to their spiv patrons then it falls onto Labour to rebuild our economic way of life.
It would be the work of generations. Not sure how we do it. British business (not just government) bought into the US paradigm that you focus on your core capability and divest or outsource everything else. Except we went a bit further and divested or outsourced half our core capabilities too.
Make us a better place for entrepreneurs and small businesses than the US or the EU:
- low taxes (especially corporate and payroll) combined with low spending - scrap useless or damaging regulations (mnimum wage, Net Zero, modern slavery statements etc. etc. etc.) - greatly relax the planning system - end subsidies to failing businesses and regions such as Northern Ireland
That's how we start being capitalists again, and what a Conservative government with a majority of 70+ should be doing.
I think there are about 10 000 referrals a year under modern slavery regulations, half of which are children. These are horribly abused people. Seems like useful regulation to me.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Places don't carry responsibility for history.
The descendents if Vikings are now all over, with lots in Russia. Insofar as any Roman bloodline survives, you could try asking in Dacia or the Ladino speaking parts of the Alps. Neither Rome nor Denmark will get you very far.
They can all be traced if you look hard enough
Why don't you go ask Tufton Street for some funding then?
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
Not recruited from the current British population, though; the Jutes, Saxons etc hadn’t arrived!
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
This is the British disease. We've always been innovators. But stopped being capitalists and got swept along by 80s-style spivism. Why invest in something ourselves and take the risk when we can sell it to someone else and take the reward?
If Labour want something chunky to get their teeth into, it's this. We need to start being capitalists again, and as the Tories aren't capable of saying no to their spiv patrons then it falls onto Labour to rebuild our economic way of life.
It would be the work of generations. Not sure how we do it. British business (not just government) bought into the US paradigm that you focus on your core capability and divest or outsource everything else. Except we went a bit further and divested or outsourced half our core capabilities too.
Make us a better place for entrepreneurs and small businesses than the US or the EU:
- low taxes (especially corporate and payroll) combined with low spending - scrap useless or damaging regulations (mnimum wage, Net Zero, modern slavery statements etc. etc. etc.) - greatly relax the planning system - end subsidies to failing businesses and regions such as Northern Ireland
That's how we start being capitalists again, and what a Conservative government with a majority of 70+ should be doing.
That’s Truss on a page.
Low corporate and payroll taxes: no evidence these have contributed to productivity or growth in other rich countries. There are positive examples and equally positive counter examples. Lots of evidence in developing countries that inability to broaden and deepen the tax base leads to a vicious circle of underinvestment in infrastructure and productivity. Which brings us on to…
Low spending: the state of Britain’s core infrastructure - education in particular, but also transportation, policing, healthcare, local government - is at the point where further underinvestment will really start to put the brakes on productivity.
Minimum wage: in an economy with a surfeit of low paid unproductive jobs and almost full employment the removal of a minimum wage must be the most illogical idea of all. High wages = greater impetus to invest in technology
Net zero: nobble one of the few true growth opportunities for this country, green investment? At a time when our reliance on hydrocarbons is driving record inflation? In any case that ship has sailed, big business is already more ambitious than governments on this. A 20th century solution to 21st century problems.
Modern slavery statements? I can’t say I’ve heard many (any) multinationals moaning about that one.
Relax the planning system: yes. But good luck with the nimbys.
End subsidies to failing businesses and regions. We’ve already been ending subsidies to failing businesses since the end of the furlough scheme. But being careful with whom to prop up and whom not is certainly important. You have to be very good at knowing who the winners and losers will be though. The lack of support to potential winners is why we can’t have all those nice things thd highly industrially subsidised Americans have.
As for regions: well it’s a theory. Certainly makes a change from levelling up. Play to our strengths, ie London. And pay the social and healthcare costs of failure elsewhere.
I don't think I've ever seen so much economic illiteracy in one post - impressive on this site.
Low corporate and payroll taxes certainly boost economic growth (see Lee and Gordon, 2005, OECD 2010, Arnold, 2011, Mertens and Ravn, 2013, etc. etc. etc.) But the argument that they don't simply doesn't pass the sniff test. If they didn't, governments would raise them to 99%, because companies don't have votes. And Ireland would have been the least dynamic economy in Western Europe, not the most, over the last generation.
If legislating for minimum wages is so wonderful for productivity and incomes, why not make it £50/hour? That would surely make us the most productive and best paid economy on the planet, wouldn't it? As it is it is low enough not to cause irretrievable damage to the economy. But it has compliance costs, and reduces the incentive on those at the bottom end of the labour market to upskill themselves and improve their productivity, as well as forcing many of those people into the black economy. So we should scrap it.
Green growth is the ultimate oxymoron, especially for this country. The only reason the private sector is embracing it is to be woke, not because it makes any sense.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
Not recruited from the current British population, though; the Jutes, Saxons etc hadn’t arrived!
There are still descendants of Celts in Britain today especially in the North, Wales, Cornwall and Scotland
The Irish would also be demanding reparations for the potato famine and Cromwell. The aborigines and Indians from the Australian and US government. The Mexican government for the atrocities of Cortez from Madrid. Black South Africans from white South Africans for apartheid. The Poles from the Russians.
Protestants from Spain and the Catholic Church for the Inquisition. English Catholics from the British government for their persecution post English Reformation. Jews more compensation from Germany for the Holocaust. Much of Asia and Moscow from the Mongolian government for the atrocities of Genghis Khan etc
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
Not recruited from the current British population, though; the Jutes, Saxons etc hadn’t arrived!
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
Not recruited from the current British population, though; the Jutes, Saxons etc hadn’t arrived!
There are still descendants of Celts in Britain today especially in the North, Wales, Cornwall and Scotland
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
Not recruited from the current British population, though; the Jutes, Saxons etc hadn’t arrived!
There are still descendants of Celts in Britain today especially in the North, Wales, Cornwall and Scotland
Indeed, and so far my researches suggest that my paternal ancestors were among them.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
Ultimately, so what? Slavery ended 190 years ago. The property has been operated by free labour since then, the investment in it is not the product of slavery, and anyone who was a slave or slaver is long dead.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
Ultimately, so what? Slavery ended 190 years ago. The property has been operated by free labour since then, the investment in it is not the product of slavery, and anyone who was a slave or slaver is long dead.
There are claims against real property that survive that long in English law.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
Italy's economy benefits hugely from tourists to the forum, so a compensation claim could be made from the British government to the Italian government for a share of the proceeds given British slaves helped build it
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
This is the British disease. We've always been innovators. But stopped being capitalists and got swept along by 80s-style spivism. Why invest in something ourselves and take the risk when we can sell it to someone else and take the reward?
If Labour want something chunky to get their teeth into, it's this. We need to start being capitalists again, and as the Tories aren't capable of saying no to their spiv patrons then it falls onto Labour to rebuild our economic way of life.
It would be the work of generations. Not sure how we do it. British business (not just government) bought into the US paradigm that you focus on your core capability and divest or outsource everything else. Except we went a bit further and divested or outsourced half our core capabilities too.
Make us a better place for entrepreneurs and small businesses than the US or the EU:
- low taxes (especially corporate and payroll) combined with low spending - scrap useless or damaging regulations (mnimum wage, Net Zero, modern slavery statements etc. etc. etc.) - greatly relax the planning system - end subsidies to failing businesses and regions such as Northern Ireland
That's how we start being capitalists again, and what a Conservative government with a majority of 70+ should be doing.
That’s Truss on a page.
Low corporate and payroll taxes: no evidence these have contributed to productivity or growth in other rich countries. There are positive examples and equally positive counter examples. Lots of evidence in developing countries that inability to broaden and deepen the tax base leads to a vicious circle of underinvestment in infrastructure and productivity. Which brings us on to…
Low spending: the state of Britain’s core infrastructure - education in particular, but also transportation, policing, healthcare, local government - is at the point where further underinvestment will really start to put the brakes on productivity.
Minimum wage: in an economy with a surfeit of low paid unproductive jobs and almost full employment the removal of a minimum wage must be the most illogical idea of all. High wages = greater impetus to invest in technology
Net zero: nobble one of the few true growth opportunities for this country, green investment? At a time when our reliance on hydrocarbons is driving record inflation? In any case that ship has sailed, big business is already more ambitious than governments on this. A 20th century solution to 21st century problems.
Modern slavery statements? I can’t say I’ve heard many (any) multinationals moaning about that one.
Relax the planning system: yes. But good luck with the nimbys.
End subsidies to failing businesses and regions. We’ve already been ending subsidies to failing businesses since the end of the furlough scheme. But being careful with whom to prop up and whom not is certainly important. You have to be very good at knowing who the winners and losers will be though. The lack of support to potential winners is why we can’t have all those nice things thd highly industrially subsidised Americans have.
As for regions: well it’s a theory. Certainly makes a change from levelling up. Play to our strengths, ie London. And pay the social and healthcare costs of failure elsewhere.
I don't think I've ever seen so much economic illiteracy in one post - impressive on this site.
Low corporate and payroll taxes certainly boost economic growth (see Lee and Gordon, 2005, OECD 2010, Arnold, 2011, Mertens and Ravn, 2013, etc. etc. etc.) But the argument that they don't simply doesn't pass the sniff test. If they didn't, governments would raise them to 99%, because companies don't have votes. And Ireland would have been the least dynamic economy in Western Europe, not the most, over the last generation.
If legislating for minimum wages is so wonderful for productivity and incomes, why not make it £50/hour? That would surely make us the most productive and best paid economy on the planet, wouldn't it? As it is it is low enough not to cause irretrievable damage to the economy. But it has compliance costs, and reduces the incentive on those at the bottom end of the labour market to upskill themselves and improve their productivity, as well as forcing many of those people into the black economy. So we should scrap it.
Green growth is the ultimate oxymoron, especially for this country. The only reason the private sector is embracing it is to be woke, not because it makes any sense.
I was closely involved in building a company from nothing to one which has an annual turnover of £50 million and 400+ employees in three continents. Corporation tax rates never bothered us or had any effect on investment decisions we made. As long as they do not go much higher than comparable rates elsewhere they are not an issue.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
Simple example on HS2 - because they can’t estimate the benefits of local services running on the east coast and midland mainlines the economic benefit used in the models was zero.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
Yes, let's give it to the government. They always deliver complex and demanding projects cheaply, efficiently and on time.
What part of "StateCo" do you not understand? The government is the last thing we need messing things up - which the problem with HS2. The private sector would not have created bullshit contracts like the government. But also would not build the thing at its own risk.
Hence a StateCo. Commercially run, but state owned. As works successfully across Europe building HS rail in France, Germany, Spain etc etc etc.
Doesn't matter if it tries to be "commercially run". In practice, that will try to get the best of the government and the best of the private sector, but will end up with the worst of both, as nationalised industries always do, and for blindingly obvious reasons. There is no equivalent in the state-owned sector to bankruptcy or private sector shareholder returns, which impose discipline on private sector managers. Labour relations and contracting are inevitably politicised. And management decisions also often politicised, whatever the original intention is.
OK. But its a model that works very effectively elsewhere. So it isn't the model that's the problem, its the application in this country. The simple reality is that the private sector cannot just decide to invest tens of billions in strategic infrastructure projects. So either the government backs it or it doesn't get built.
So I would rather have government do the political approval and borrow the money cheaply then let the private sector build it. Your solution would be for us to build nothing at all.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
Not recruited from the current British population, though; the Jutes, Saxons etc hadn’t arrived!
There is no England, just occupied Wales...
Though most Celts originated from around Austria originally too
The Irish would also be demanding reparations for the potato famine and Cromwell. The aborigines and Indians from the Australian and US government. The Mexican government for the atrocities of Cortez from Madrid. Black South Africans from white South Africans for apartheid. The Poles from the Russians.
Protestants from Spain and the Catholic Church for the Inquisition. English Catholics from the British government for their persecution post English Reformation. Jews more compensation from Germany for the Holocaust. Much of Asia and Moscow from the Mongolian government for the atrocities of Genghis Khan etc
Good thing too.
But we should start with the low hanging fruit, which is Drax. Keeping the plantation on is pure trolling.
The Irish would also be demanding reparations for the potato famine and Cromwell. The aborigines and Indians from the Australian and US government. The Mexican government for the atrocities of Cortez from Madrid. Black South Africans from white South Africans for apartheid. The Poles from the Russians.
Protestants from Spain and the Catholic Church for the Inquisition. English Catholics from the British government for their persecution post English Reformation. Jews more compensation from Germany for the Holocaust. Much of Asia and Moscow from the Mongolian government for the atrocities of Genghis Khan etc
Good thing too.
But we should start with the low hanging fruit, which is Drax. Keeping the plantation on is pure trolling.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
I believe there are historical precedents for state capitalism making the trains run on time.
Remember that almost all of the stupid we are suffering with the railways is the Department of Transport. And it seems pretty certain they are doing the work of the Treasury in trying to cut the public cost.
The cost is because the current model is broken. Even the government understood this - the Shapps Williams review would have completely swept all this away. Instead we're in a place where operators are actively trying to drive as many passengers away as possible so as to justify the coming cuts.
With fare revenues going to the government not the operators, they get paid to manage the thing as directed by the DfT. So not bothering to run trains at all (TPE, Avanti etc) is no bother to these companies as they get paid to do so.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
Ultimately, so what? Slavery ended 190 years ago. The property has been operated by free labour since then, the investment in it is not the product of slavery, and anyone who was a slave or slaver is long dead.
There are claims against real property that survive that long in English law.
You'll find it almost impossible to bring an action to recover land after 12 years.
Try bringing a claim in tort against someone whose ancestor did yours a wrong 190 years ago, and you'll be treated as a vexatious litigant.
The Irish would also be demanding reparations for the potato famine and Cromwell. The aborigines and Indians from the Australian and US government. The Mexican government for the atrocities of Cortez from Madrid. Black South Africans from white South Africans for apartheid. The Poles from the Russians.
Protestants from Spain and the Catholic Church for the Inquisition. English Catholics from the British government for their persecution post English Reformation. Jews more compensation from Germany for the Holocaust. Much of Asia and Moscow from the Mongolian government for the atrocities of Genghis Khan etc
Good thing too.
But we should start with the low hanging fruit, which is Drax. Keeping the plantation on is pure trolling.
There are no slaves on Drax's plantation now
A point that seems to have been overlooked.
To get a little more contentious, should the descendants of Sudeten or Eastern Germans be entitled to reclaim their lost property?
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
There are certainly a lot of questions around the issue which is why as I noted above I have an open mind on it. Clearly there is some kind of statute of limitations on this kind of thing, the only question is where that should apply. For instance, Jewish victims of the Nazis are able to obtain restoration of lost property, IIRC, and I think we would all agree that that is right, even though the events are close to a century ago now. Since I have no way of knowing whether my ancestors (who I am guessing were largely Saxon and Celtic peasants) suffered any historical wrongs ove the last 1000 years or do that might have affected my life and prosperity, I have no grounds on which to claim compensation for anything. I don't think you can say that for descendents of West Indian slaves. You certainly can't say it about Jewish descendents of holocaust survivors. So to me the descendents of West Indian slavery survivors fall into a grey area and the question is at least worthy of debate. My general feeling is that regardless of the rights or wrongs of the situation, meaningful reparations aren't generally going to happen because there is not much appetite for it on our side and there are few means of the Caribbean countries forcing the issue.
In other news another small UK based nuclear startup needs money and the government is set to refuse, but foreign wealth funds have been queuing up to invest. It's absolutely maddening that the UK government just seems incapable of backing UK industry and is comfortable letting foreign states snap up businesses and IP and future profitability.
It's time for someone to come in and smash up the Treasury, fire all of the "we know best" mandarins who couldn't grow a whelk stall let alone an economy and refocus the whole energy of the state into making the economy grow and for the UK benefit from the growth rather than the Saudi Arabian wealth fund or Tencent.
How did that approach work out for Truss and Kwarteng?
Nobody asked for unfunded tax cuts, though. That was the major issue with their approach. I think most people recognise that the UK has a growth issue and that the dead hand of the treasury is a major part of it.
Conservatives have been in control of the Treasury for the last 12 years including the current PM, so not likely to change now.
I don't see the Treasury as a brake on growth, that is more down to short termism by management and excessive financialisation by speculators with very short term horizons. They can add liquidity, and do asset stripping but our teenage scribblers have no long term vision. They just want a quick buck and get out.
But that model is what the treasury has supported for 20+ years. In fact it has constantly blocked moves to change the investment environment to stop financial engineering both by Labour and Tory chancellors as "picking winners" and "market interference".
The treasury is rammed with those same kind of people who can't see beyond tomorrow's GDP figures and short term optimisation strategy. Which is why London gets £22bn in public transport investment but the North got HS2 cancelled at £17bn. Or why why RR are now basically funding their whole nuclear play from the US rather than relying on the treasury to do what's right, or Moltex finding more luck with Canada than our own treasury. Projects that don't move their numbers in their broken models get chopped and foreign investors, usually state backed, pick up the pieces and future UK productivity and profit is offshored.
You may know about healthcare issues, you have never dealt with the treasury first hand. It's a fucking nightmare.
Simple example on HS2 - because they can’t estimate the benefits of local services running on the east coast and midland mainlines the economic benefit used in the models was zero.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
Yes, let's give it to the government. They always deliver complex and demanding projects cheaply, efficiently and on time.
What part of "StateCo" do you not understand? The government is the last thing we need messing things up - which the problem with HS2. The private sector would not have created bullshit contracts like the government. But also would not build the thing at its own risk.
Hence a StateCo. Commercially run, but state owned. As works successfully across Europe building HS rail in France, Germany, Spain etc etc etc.
If HS2 is such a great thing then why can't private investors stump up for it?
How would that work? We've had various private sector proposals for a high speed spine route. The problem they all face is getting a bill through parliament allowing them to slap a purchase order on the land. HS2 is political dynamite for a government with an 80 seat majority to drive through - a private bill would get absolutely nowhere.
Or if you mean government creates the law and then expects the private sector to fund it, that doesn't work either. Its not a railway company building this, so the construction consortium would need 25 year + guaranteed revenues which it can't possibly get as the operator isn't them and the entire rail industry structure is almost certain to be completely changed at least once.
The reason the state has t build strategic state infrastructure is because there is no other option. We need the dead hand of government off the tiller, but only government can get the legislation through and stump up the money. Hence the need for a European-style StateCo.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
I believe there are historical precedents for state capitalism making the trains run on time.
Remember that almost all of the stupid we are suffering with the railways is the Department of Transport. And it seems pretty certain they are doing the work of the Treasury in trying to cut the public cost.
The cost is because the current model is broken. Even the government understood this - the Shapps Williams review would have completely swept all this away. Instead we're in a place where operators are actively trying to drive as many passengers away as possible so as to justify the coming cuts.
With fare revenues going to the government not the operators, they get paid to manage the thing as directed by the DfT. So not bothering to run trains at all (TPE, Avanti etc) is no bother to these companies as they get paid to do so.
And anything a provider can do to solve the current issue (such as recruiting and training new drivers) costs the operators money and they currently have zero incentive to do so because they could be removed at any notice.
Let's try and raise spirits with an upbeat NY prediction of the death of 2 monsters. One in Russia, one in the USA.
There comes a point in a man’s life when he must burrow deep within and conduct an inventory of what he finds there. The fundamental questions can’t be ducked forever. Has he made this world a better place? If not, has he at least done no harm? If he has made a mess, is it too late to undo some of it? If it isn’t, just what should he do to undo? Vladimir Putin will, almost despite himself, feel compelled to perform this pitiless exercise in the first quarter of 2023. His answers, delivered initially to the shaving mirror, then the full politburo, then to Russia and the watching world are No, No, Thankfully Not, and Call off the War against Ukraine and stand down to spend more time with his Dacha. He’ll devote what days are left to him gardening and mastering the cello. He’s always wanted to do this, he says, and if not now when? People are astonished but they shouldn’t be if they’ve read A Christmas Carol by Dickens.
The end of Donald Trump, also in 2023, is for different reasons. Forget the legal stuff, none of that matters so long as the cult still loves him, which they continue to do until a rally in Texas in June when something untoward happens. Somebody gets the intro music wrong. Instead of Start Me Up the far right titan enters to the strains of Rockin Robin by the Jackson Five. It’s no biggie except that Trump misjudges his response. Rather than laugh it off he starts dancing to the funky pop classic booming across the arena, not in an appealing hammy way but earnestly bopping around as if auditioning for America’s Got Talent. Consumed with hubris, swept up in the moment, he thinks he can pull this off, thinks his adoring base will dig it, what he’s doing, but they don’t. Suddenly he looks ludicrous to them and like The Wizard of Oz the spell is broken. They’re embarrassed for him and, worse, for themselves. It’s sad. When he tries to do the splits that’s the last straw. The trickle of punters leaving becomes a flood and three hours later he’s rambling on about the Radical Commie Democrats and Hunter Biden’s laptop to a near empty auditorium. Eric comes on and tenderly ushers his father off the stage. It’s over.
HS2 is also a prime example of how we make everything absurdly expensive whilst cutting service provision to the bare bones. The section to Birmingham is contracted in such a way that the consortia are responsible for impacts like earthquakes decades after it is built. So the cost has ballooned to £stupid with much of that extra largese into the pockets of the companies left legally on the hook.
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
I believe there are historical precedents for state capitalism making the trains run on time.
Remember that almost all of the stupid we are suffering with the railways is the Department of Transport. And it seems pretty certain they are doing the work of the Treasury in trying to cut the public cost.
The cost is because the current model is broken. Even the government understood this - the Shapps Williams review would have completely swept all this away. Instead we're in a place where operators are actively trying to drive as many passengers away as possible so as to justify the coming cuts.
With fare revenues going to the government not the operators, they get paid to manage the thing as directed by the DfT. So not bothering to run trains at all (TPE, Avanti etc) is no bother to these companies as they get paid to do so.
And anything a provider can do to solve the current issue (such as recruiting and training new drivers) costs the operators money and they currently have zero incentive to do so because they could be removed at any notice.
They can do nothing - the operators in trouble operate under direct mandate from the DfT. They have left Avanti in private hands because if they "renationalise" it all of the shit comes raining down on their heads rather than TrenItalia / First. Not that they can "renationalise" it - the private sector consortium which is the "nationalised" operator has no spare capacity to take on more operations. And can't hire more because the DfT won't let them!
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
Ultimately, so what? Slavery ended 190 years ago. The property has been operated by free labour since then, the investment in it is not the product of slavery, and anyone who was a slave or slaver is long dead.
There are claims against real property that survive that long in English law.
You'll find it almost impossible to bring an action to recover land after 12 years.
Try bringing a claim in tort against someone whose ancestor did yours a wrong 190 years ago, and you'll be treated as a vexatious litigant.
Not the case. Adverse possession is never available to an occupant whose occupation of land ultimately derives from a lease.
"In June 2020, Drax wrote an article in the Dorset Echo suggesting that rioters linked to the Black Lives Matter protests had been responsible for desecrating The Cenotaph war memorial in London.[20]"
Bit of an o.g. in two ways. First, it's already pretty clear that black lives didn't matter much to his ancestors. Secondly the people the cenotaph is about are by definition dead, and aren't we meant to be putting the past behind us?
It looks like Great British Railways has been quietly abandoned, meaning this mess will continue.
It's time to cut these private operators out, bring the franchises into a single public company, British Railways and get the DfT out. We desperately need the Swiss model in this country.
The best model of a working railway we have in the UK is TfL, so let's see what does and doesn't work there and use it for our knowledge.
My suggestion would be that they run frequent services, they keep costs relatively low and Sadiq doesn't try and run the lines himself, he just tries to get TfL the funding it needs.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
Ultimately, so what? Slavery ended 190 years ago. The property has been operated by free labour since then, the investment in it is not the product of slavery, and anyone who was a slave or slaver is long dead.
There are claims against real property that survive that long in English law.
You'll find it almost impossible to bring an action to recover land after 12 years.
Try bringing a claim in tort against someone whose ancestor did yours a wrong 190 years ago, and you'll be treated as a vexatious litigant.
The more interesting question we should be asking ourselves is why Barbados has become so hostile to Britain in recent years.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn several of its leading politicians are on Beijing's payroll.
The Irish would also be demanding reparations for the potato famine and Cromwell. The aborigines and Indians from the Australian and US government. The Mexican government for the atrocities of Cortez from Madrid. Black South Africans from white South Africans for apartheid. The Poles from the Russians.
Protestants from Spain and the Catholic Church for the Inquisition. English Catholics from the British government for their persecution post English Reformation. Jews more compensation from Germany for the Holocaust. Much of Asia and Moscow from the Mongolian government for the atrocities of Genghis Khan etc
Good thing too.
But we should start with the low hanging fruit, which is Drax. Keeping the plantation on is pure trolling.
There are no slaves on Drax's plantation now
A point that seems to have been overlooked.
To get a little more contentious, should the descendants of Sudeten or Eastern Germans be entitled to reclaim their lost property?
Or the Roman Catholic Church for lands and property taken at the Reformation? Or descendants of Cavaliers for land taken by Cromwell or descendants of Roundheads for lands taken at the Restoration by the Crown?
Plenty of Palestinians would have compensation claims for land taken by Israel too. As would descendants of French and Russian aristocrats from the French and Russian governments for lands taken from their families in the French and Russian revolutions
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
Ultimately, so what? Slavery ended 190 years ago. The property has been operated by free labour since then, the investment in it is not the product of slavery, and anyone who was a slave or slaver is long dead.
There are claims against real property that survive that long in English law.
You'll find it almost impossible to bring an action to recover land after 12 years.
Try bringing a claim in tort against someone whose ancestor did yours a wrong 190 years ago, and you'll be treated as a vexatious litigant.
The more interesting question we should be asking ourselves is why Barbados has become so hostile to Britain in recent years.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn several of its leading politicians are on Beijing's payroll.
That is widely believed to be the case. China is, as it happens, one of those countries that still practises slavery.
The Irish would also be demanding reparations for the potato famine and Cromwell. The aborigines and Indians from the Australian and US government. The Mexican government for the atrocities of Cortez from Madrid. Black South Africans from white South Africans for apartheid. The Poles from the Russians.
Protestants from Spain and the Catholic Church for the Inquisition. English Catholics from the British government for their persecution post English Reformation. Jews more compensation from Germany for the Holocaust. Much of Asia and Moscow from the Mongolian government for the atrocities of Genghis Khan etc
Good thing too.
But we should start with the low hanging fruit, which is Drax. Keeping the plantation on is pure trolling.
There are no slaves on Drax's plantation now
A point that seems to have been overlooked.
To get a little more contentious, should the descendants of Sudeten or Eastern Germans be entitled to reclaim their lost property?
No it hasn't.
A lot of money was recovered from Jimmy Savile's estate. His legatees didn't get to keep it on grounds of personal non involvement in his crimes.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
There are certainly a lot of questions around the issue which is why as I noted above I have an open mind on it. Clearly there is some kind of statute of limitations on this kind of thing, the only question is where that should apply. For instance, Jewish victims of the Nazis are able to obtain restoration of lost property, IIRC, and I think we would all agree that that is right, even though the events are close to a century ago now. Since I have no way of knowing whether my ancestors (who I am guessing were largely Saxon and Celtic peasants) suffered any historical wrongs ove the last 1000 years or do that might have affected my life and prosperity, I have no grounds on which to claim compensation for anything. I don't think you can say that for descendents of West Indian slaves. You certainly can't say it about Jewish descendents of holocaust survivors. So to me the descendents of West Indian slavery survivors fall into a grey area and the question is at least worthy of debate. My general feeling is that regardless of the rights or wrongs of the situation, meaningful reparations aren't generally going to happen because there is not much appetite for it on our side and there are few means of the Caribbean countries forcing the issue.
Barbados and its people would be much better off if they campaigned for British investment and aid to help bolster links and strengthen the alliance of a friendly country with historical ties, and I suspect that would garner a lot of support here.
Raking over the ashes of sins of the forefathers centuries later isn't going to achieve anything except resentment, polarisation and mutual dissatisfaction.
I see the slavery reparations story is moving up a gear. More descendants of slave owners are to be targetted for reparations. No blame is attached to the descendants however.
This story is given some prominence as it’s a well known actor however it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Interesting. Cumberbatch is one of the more common surnames in Barbados which tells you that the family must have been major plantation owners (slaves frequently took the names of their owners). I had always assumed there must be a connection with the actor - he's pretty posh and it's not a common name over here. I remember driving past Drax plantation many times too - which I later discovered is still owned by the Drax family over here (a Tory MP). None of this is ancient history. I'm not totally sold on reparations but it's a debate that's needed. Certainly feelings on the issue run strong in the Caribbean.
Presumably those whose family members were pillaged by the Vikings can then claim compensation from Denmark too? As can those whose ancestors were enslaved by the Romans from Italy?
Traceability is the key. There's any amount of uk property like Drax's which can be definitively tied to slavery, and not much doubt how African ancestry chaps in the Caribbean got there.
And you can trace those enslaved by the Romans or pillaged by the Vikings too if you look hard enough. The Roman Catholic Church would certainly have a case against Denmark, Norway and Sweden for the pillaging of Lindisfarne Abbey too.
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
He documentably inherited the proceeds. Not the case in your other examples.
Much of the Roman Forum still present in Rome today was built by slaves, including from Britain.
There is no traceable line from the owners of the forum then to the owners now, and nobody to whom you can point and say they are beyond reasonable doubt descendants of those slaves. They would be Italians if you could.
Ultimately, so what? Slavery ended 190 years ago. The property has been operated by free labour since then, the investment in it is not the product of slavery, and anyone who was a slave or slaver is long dead.
There are claims against real property that survive that long in English law.
You'll find it almost impossible to bring an action to recover land after 12 years.
Try bringing a claim in tort against someone whose ancestor did yours a wrong 190 years ago, and you'll be treated as a vexatious litigant.
The more interesting question we should be asking ourselves is why Barbados has become so hostile to Britain in recent years.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn several of its leading politicians are on Beijing's payroll.
It is still in the Commonwealth but where there is a potential payday claim a relatively poor island will explore it
Comments
We see that on here.
Actually, one thing Starmer could do to help is ban private funding of political parties. The Tories are openly corrupt, but New Labour weren't far behind when it came down to donations. State funding of parties removes the obvious influence of the spiv class who have made it large selling everything off.
Prompt: Generate a ridiculous and absurd conspiracy theory based on Robert smithson, international car park software salesman
Answer: Here is a ridiculous and absurd conspiracy theory based on Robert Smithson, international car park software salesman:
Robert Smithson is more than just an ordinary car park software salesman. In reality, he is actually a high-ranking member of a secret society known as the "Order of the Parking Spot." This society has been around for centuries, and its members are sworn to protect the sacred art of parking.
According to legend, the Order possesses an ancient and powerful artifact known as the "Parking Spot of Power." This artifact has the ability to control the minds of those who park in its presence, and it has been used by the Order to manipulate world events and political leaders for centuries.
Robert Smithson has been tasked with using his position as an international car park software salesman to infiltrate parking garages and other car-related institutions around the world. He is secretly gathering intelligence and recruiting new members to the Order, all while selling software and pretending to be an ordinary salesman.
But little do people know, Robert Smithson and the Order of the Parking Spot are working towards their ultimate goal of global parking domination. They will stop at nothing to achieve this, including silencing or eliminating anyone who stands in their way.
House prices fall by 16.5%
Murray makes the semis at Wimbledon
The Ukraine war ends
Oasis reform
Trump withdraws from the GOP race
No general election
No Con lead in the polls
It rains in April
Morris Dancer doesn't use the Quote button
FoM is easy (and probably will be tmost popular with Starmer's base) but will obviously respike EU immigration to the UK - not that it's particularly low anyway, but still.
CU is relatively straightforward but would cut across the Auz/NZ trade deals and TPP in play, and maybe some of the carry over agreements as tweaked too, so would take longer - maybe a mutual "customs arrangement" would be easier. It also would also be a way to resolve the NIP (and it wouldn't surprise me if the EU simply stall and talk out the clock, waiting for Labour, on that now).
Single market is the hardest because it involves a large and complex regulatory regime, and dynamic alignment, so I'd expect instead a sector by sector approach to that.
https://apple.news/ACEjP8zylS6WgDrPjm3_qrA
We get the most expensive railway conceivable now cut back so hard that it can never fulfil the purpose it was designed for. Or - radical idea - had StateCo built it we'd have cut all that crap out as self-insured, the contractors get paid for doing the work and we get it fit for purpose and much cheaper. But can't do that as even a state-owned commercial enterprise is borrowing to the Treasury and therefore communistic.
It looks like Medvedev has also been spending a bit of time on the old ChatGPT
Write an absurd and highly unlikely list of global predictions for 2023 as if written in a geopolitical commentator’s blog:
“In a shocking turn of events, North Korea and South Korea reunify and become the "Korean Superstate," with Kim Jong-un as its undisputed leader.
The United States and Russia form an unlikely alliance, with the two countries jointly leading a mission to colonize Mars.
The European Union collapses, and all member countries revert back to their pre-EU national identities.
China experiences a widespread technological malfunction, causing all of its advanced systems to shut down for a period of three months.
The United Nations is disbanded, and a new global governing body called the "World Council" is formed in its place.
The world's oceans rise by 20 feet, flooding coastal cities and leading to mass migration inland.
A new highly contagious and deadly virus emerges, killing millions before a cure is found.
The world's economy collapses, leading to widespread poverty and civil unrest.
In a surprising move, Canada becomes a superpower, with its advanced healthcare and education systems propelling it to the top of the global rankings.
Aliens make contact with Earth, and it is revealed that they have been secretly observing humanity for centuries.
It's a slightly amusing notion - the Undecideds riding over the horizon to rescue the beleaguered Conservatives and ensure Rishi Sunak gets his re-election (or election in his case).
There seem two inherent assumptions - first, the Don't Knows will actually turn out on the day and second, when they do they will rush like an electoral tsunami to the Blue Team.
It would be good to see any comparable data from 1995-97. Were the big Labour leads under Blair predicated on an avalanche (different metaphor, it is 2023) of disillusioned Conservatives moving to Don't Know/Won't Say and staying there?
It also probably helps Labour for there to be doubt - that encourages and motivates their supporters and gets them to vote whereas the complacency of victory leads to abstention.
Still, there is a salient point - Starmer has not, to use the euphemism, "sealed the deal" with many former Conservative voters. It may be so far he's not needed to - no point interrupting your enemy when he is making mistake after mistake. The two points I would suggest are first, a clear, concise and costed policy programme with the headlines from summer of this year onward. There's an opportunity to build a narrative around what a Labour Government would and above all wouldn't do. To re-assure the wavering Conservative means giving them nothing to worry about.
The second aspect is discipline - successful parties are disciplined parties. The Conservatives have shown in the past 12 months of what an ill-disciplined rabble is capable. Labour needs to ensure everything on social media, every speech, every interview is focused on winning the next election and getting a Labour Government elected. That means not banging on about "culture wars" or peripheral issues but concentrating on what they call "pocket book" matters in the US.
It's Still The Economy, Stupid - as someone might still opine.
Happy new year.
- low taxes (especially corporate and payroll) combined with low spending
- scrap useless or damaging regulations (mnimum wage, Net Zero, modern slavery statements etc. etc. etc.)
- greatly relax the planning system
- end subsidies to failing businesses and regions such as Northern Ireland
That's how we start being capitalists again, and what a Conservative government with a majority of 70+ should be doing.
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It’s the diamond studded gold plating on the hs2 contract that makes it’s so blooming expensive. It could have been done for a lot less if the government had accepted some of the risks especially the longer term ones.
HS2 is a really badly run PSE contract.
“Aliens will reveal themselves to be the true rulers of the earth, and they will demand that all humans bow down to them and pledge their loyalty.
The United States will be overtaken by a rebellion led by a group of radical llama farmers, who will establish llama farming as the national economy.
North Korea will develop a weapon that turns people into sentient pickles, and they will use it to take over the world.
A giant, man-eating plant will emerge from the depths of the Amazon rainforest and begin a rampage across South America.
The moon will be revealed to be a giant spaceship, and it will fly away from earth, leaving humanity behind.
All forms of technology will suddenly stop working, and humanity will be forced to return to a pre-industrial society.
The world's oceans will turn to jelly, making it impossible for ships to sail and causing global chaos.
The earth will be struck by a rogue planet, causing the extinction of all life on earth.”
Rather than making Brexit work.
By which I mean an emphasis on the practicalities rather than options automatically discounted because of ideology.
Which is a problem for anyone claiming they don't matter
Ironically, I think we'll see Starmer negotiate something which looks very similar to May's deal.
Low corporate and payroll taxes: no evidence these have contributed to productivity or growth in other rich countries. There are positive examples and equally positive counter examples. Lots of evidence in developing countries that inability to broaden and deepen the tax base leads to a vicious circle of underinvestment in infrastructure and productivity. Which brings us on to…
Low spending: the state of Britain’s core infrastructure - education in particular, but also transportation, policing, healthcare, local government - is at the point where further underinvestment will really start to put the brakes on productivity.
Minimum wage: in an economy with a surfeit of low paid unproductive jobs and almost full employment the removal of a minimum wage must be the most illogical idea of all. High wages = greater impetus to invest in technology
Net zero: nobble one of the few true growth opportunities for this country, green investment? At a time when our reliance on hydrocarbons is driving record inflation? In any case that ship has sailed, big business is already more ambitious than governments on this. A 20th century solution to 21st century problems.
Modern slavery statements? I can’t say I’ve heard many (any) multinationals moaning about that one.
Relax the planning system: yes. But good luck with the nimbys.
End subsidies to failing businesses and regions. We’ve already been ending subsidies to failing businesses since the end of the furlough scheme. But being careful with whom to prop up and whom not is certainly important. You have to be very good at knowing who the winners and losers will be though. The lack of support to potential winners is why we can’t have all those nice things thd highly industrially subsidised Americans have.
As for regions: well it’s a theory. Certainly makes a change from levelling up. Play to our strengths, ie London. And pay the social and healthcare costs of failure elsewhere.
It's the only logical way forward.
Hence a StateCo. Commercially run, but state owned. As works successfully across Europe building HS rail in France, Germany, Spain etc etc etc.
The descendents if Vikings are now all over, with lots in Russia. Insofar as any Roman bloodline survives, you could try asking in Dacia or the Ladino speaking parts of the Alps. Neither Rome nor Denmark will get you very far.
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1609243111825498115?s=20&t=kVCIsPeUBGBxi39Exr37rg
Drax did not own slaves nor did his parents either. So if you are going to make reparations for something that happened centuries ago then it is an open book, including for the slaves taken by the Vikings, Romans and Barbary Corsairs too
An admission that Brexit has negatively affected everything that matters, and only by undoing portions of it can the "best" be made
But most of the DNV hordes who appeared in 2019? They didn't vote Labour before so they won't go back there - they didn't vote for anyone. So they now get the Tories have conned them, that proves what they always thought about the point in voting, and that is the last we will see of them.
The only people who should be compensated are ex-slaves. The only people who should pay compensation are human traffickers.
The thing that surprises me is, given his very long and successful career at the CPS / in the legal world, surely he must be brimming with ideas on criminal justice system / legal reforms? But we hear nothing. Maybe he doesn’t want to give any ammunition to his opponents. Scarred by the Johnson/Saville smears.
Keeping his powder dry until he gets into power, and then, bang: we get presented with a raft of well thought through, fundamental reforms.
I just can’t imagine he spent his career not developing a profound critique of the criminal justice system.
Anyone else not find this rather odd?
I don’t think it’s worth going for compensation for that!
The traces of the pillage of Lindisfarne Abbey are probably still in Scandinavia today.
Slaves were taken from coastal areas of Britain to end up in wealthy families in North Africa or the old Ottoman Empire well into the 18th century
Low corporate and payroll taxes certainly boost economic growth (see Lee and Gordon, 2005, OECD 2010, Arnold, 2011, Mertens and Ravn, 2013, etc. etc. etc.) But the argument that they don't simply doesn't pass the sniff test. If they didn't, governments would raise them to 99%, because companies don't have votes. And Ireland would have been the least dynamic economy in Western Europe, not the most, over the last generation.
If legislating for minimum wages is so wonderful for productivity and incomes, why not make it £50/hour? That would surely make us the most productive and best paid economy on the planet, wouldn't it? As it is it is low enough not to cause irretrievable damage to the economy. But it has compliance costs, and reduces the incentive on those at the bottom end of the labour market to upskill themselves and improve their productivity, as well as forcing many of those people into the black economy. So we should scrap it.
Green growth is the ultimate oxymoron, especially for this country. The only reason the private sector is embracing it is to be woke, not because it makes any sense.
Protestants from Spain and the Catholic Church for the Inquisition. English Catholics from the British government for their persecution post English Reformation. Jews more compensation from Germany for the Holocaust. Much of Asia and Moscow from the Mongolian government for the atrocities of Genghis Khan etc
https://www.science.org/content/article/dna-untangles-britains-past
"Surprisingly, the analysis revealed that men in southern England have almost as much Celtic ancestry as the more typically Celtic Scots."
So it may be you as well.
Rather nice canapés available with a decent selection of wines as well
So I would rather have government do the political approval and borrow the money cheaply then let the private sector build it. Your solution would be for us to build nothing at all.
But we should start with the low hanging fruit, which is Drax. Keeping the plantation on is pure trolling.
The cost is because the current model is broken. Even the government understood this - the Shapps Williams review would have completely swept all this away. Instead we're in a place where operators are actively trying to drive as many passengers away as possible so as to justify the coming cuts.
With fare revenues going to the government not the operators, they get paid to manage the thing as directed by the DfT. So not bothering to run trains at all (TPE, Avanti etc) is no bother to these companies as they get paid to do so.
Try bringing a claim in tort against someone whose ancestor did yours a wrong 190 years ago, and you'll be treated as a vexatious litigant.
To get a little more contentious, should the descendants of Sudeten or Eastern Germans be entitled to reclaim their lost property?
Since I have no way of knowing whether my ancestors (who I am guessing were largely Saxon and Celtic peasants) suffered any historical wrongs ove the last 1000 years or do that might have affected my life and prosperity, I have no grounds on which to claim compensation for anything. I don't think you can say that for descendents of West Indian slaves. You certainly can't say it about Jewish descendents of holocaust survivors. So to me the descendents of West Indian slavery survivors fall into a grey area and the question is at least worthy of debate. My general feeling is that regardless of the rights or wrongs of the situation, meaningful reparations aren't generally going to happen because there is not much appetite for it on our side and there are few means of the Caribbean countries forcing the issue.
Or if you mean government creates the law and then expects the private sector to fund it, that doesn't work either. Its not a railway company building this, so the construction consortium would need 25 year + guaranteed revenues which it can't possibly get as the operator isn't them and the entire rail industry structure is almost certain to be completely changed at least once.
The reason the state has t build strategic state infrastructure is because there is no other option. We need the dead hand of government off the tiller, but only government can get the legislation through and stump up the money. Hence the need for a European-style StateCo.
There comes a point in a man’s life when he must burrow deep within and conduct an inventory of what he finds there. The fundamental questions can’t be ducked forever. Has he made this world a better place? If not, has he at least done no harm? If he has made a mess, is it too late to undo some of it? If it isn’t, just what should he do to undo? Vladimir Putin will, almost despite himself, feel compelled to perform this pitiless exercise in the first quarter of 2023. His answers, delivered initially to the shaving mirror, then the full politburo, then to Russia and the watching world are No, No, Thankfully Not, and Call off the War against Ukraine and stand down to spend more time with his Dacha. He’ll devote what days are left to him gardening and mastering the cello. He’s always wanted to do this, he says, and if not now when? People are astonished but they shouldn’t be if they’ve read A Christmas Carol by Dickens.
The end of Donald Trump, also in 2023, is for different reasons. Forget the legal stuff, none of that matters so long as the cult still loves him, which they continue to do until a rally in Texas in June when something untoward happens. Somebody gets the intro music wrong. Instead of Start Me Up the far right titan enters to the strains of Rockin Robin by the Jackson Five. It’s no biggie except that Trump misjudges his response. Rather than laugh it off he starts dancing to the funky pop classic booming across the arena, not in an appealing hammy way but earnestly bopping around as if auditioning for America’s Got Talent. Consumed with hubris, swept up in the moment, he thinks he can pull this off, thinks his adoring base will dig it, what he’s doing, but they don’t. Suddenly he looks ludicrous to them and like The Wizard of Oz the spell is broken. They’re embarrassed for him and, worse, for themselves. It’s sad. When he tries to do the splits that’s the last straw. The trickle of punters leaving becomes a flood and three hours later he’s rambling on about the Radical Commie Democrats and Hunter Biden’s laptop to a near empty auditorium. Eric comes on and tenderly ushers his father off the stage. It’s over.
"In June 2020, Drax wrote an article in the Dorset Echo suggesting that rioters linked to the Black Lives Matter protests had been responsible for desecrating The Cenotaph war memorial in London.[20]"
Bit of an o.g. in two ways. First, it's already pretty clear that black lives didn't matter much to his ancestors. Secondly the people the cenotaph is about are by definition dead, and aren't we meant to be putting the past behind us?
It's time to cut these private operators out, bring the franchises into a single public company, British Railways and get the DfT out. We desperately need the Swiss model in this country.
My suggestion would be that they run frequent services, they keep costs relatively low and Sadiq doesn't try and run the lines himself, he just tries to get TfL the funding it needs.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn several of its leading politicians are on Beijing's payroll.
Plenty of Palestinians would have compensation claims for land taken by Israel too. As would descendants of French and Russian aristocrats from the French and Russian governments for lands taken from their families in the French and Russian revolutions
A lot of money was recovered from Jimmy Savile's estate. His legatees didn't get to keep it on grounds of personal non involvement in his crimes.
Raking over the ashes of sins of the forefathers centuries later isn't going to achieve anything except resentment, polarisation and mutual dissatisfaction.