Appears, based on CNN tally, that one GOPer did NOT vote in last roll call.
Addendum - via NYT live blog:
Victoria Spartz, Republican of Indiana, voted present, leaving McCarthy with one less vote than yesterday. She previously voted for McCarthy three times.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
We were all a lot better off by 2010 than we had been in 1997.
And many people are going to find they were better off in 2010 than they will be by GE24.
This means nothing unless you can argue (credibly) that Labour will make sure everyone is much better off by 2030 than they would otherwise be under the Tories.
You can't keep referring back to golden economic years from 1997 to 2007 and putting that down to "Labour". They were almost unique circumstances with a golden economy legacy, a huge boon from 1st wave globalisation and a massive asset boom.
That might conceivably be true but the implication is it doesn't matter who is in power, it's the events outside the control of government that matter.
Or I suppose you could take it one stage further and say, the economy did well under Labour but would have been better still had the Tories been in power 1997-2010 and the economy has been shite since 2010 but would have been more shite under Labour.
Personally I feel the government does make a difference.
What is the counter-factual had the Tories been in power 1997-2007?
I think lower taxes, higher employment, lower immigration, no devolution, and a much more market-led approach to public services. More rapid economic growth prior to the GFC is my guess, and in incomes too, but probably also blindsided by it as well just as Brown was.
I also doubt we'd have signed the Lisbon Treaty, which would have led to a renegotiation, so no Brexit.
If the Tories had stayed in power and blocked devolution I think we'd have seen a constitutional crisis and quite probably Scottish independence. The decade to 2007 already saw the strongest growth in GDP and employment that we had seen for decades, or since, so I doubt that your hypothetical Tory government would have done much better than what we actually saw. And we'd have had even laxer financial regulation so the GFC might well have had a worse effect on us. No BOE independence either, so probably higher inflation. Maybe no Brexit, but presumably for Brexiteers like yourself that's a bad thing, still?
Brexit wasn't the black and white thing you make it out to be.
It was a fringe position pre-Lisbon because many of us were comfortable with the EU as it was pre-Lisbon and sans euro.
Personally, I never liked the Maastricht Treaty, but if rejecting Lisbon had led us to formalising an semi-detached/associate member position in 2007-08 why would I have voted for Brexit?
The only fly in the ointment would be free movement but I think the Tories would have approached that differently as well.
We already had a semi-detached relationship, though, with opt outs from the euro and Schengen.
I've noticed a tendency for people to underestimate how close the TCA relationship is in global trade terms. The way some talk, you'd think we were in 'no deal' land.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
We were all a lot better off by 2010 than we had been in 1997.
And many people are going to find they were better off in 2010 than they will be by GE24.
This means nothing unless you can argue (credibly) that Labour will make sure everyone is much better off by 2030 than they would otherwise be under the Tories.
You can't keep referring back to golden economic years from 1997 to 2007 and putting that down to "Labour". They were almost unique circumstances with a golden economy legacy, a huge boon from 1st wave globalisation and a massive asset boom.
That might conceivably be true but the implication is it doesn't matter who is in power, it's the events outside the control of government that matter.
Or I suppose you could take it one stage further and say, the economy did well under Labour but would have been better still had the Tories been in power 1997-2010 and the economy has been shite since 2010 but would have been more shite under Labour.
Personally I feel the government does make a difference.
What is the counter-factual had the Tories been in power 1997-2007?
I think lower taxes, higher employment, lower immigration, no devolution, and a much more market-led approach to public services. More rapid economic growth prior to the GFC is my guess, and in incomes too, but probably also blindsided by it as well just as Brown was.
I also doubt we'd have signed the Lisbon Treaty, which would have led to a renegotiation, so no Brexit.
If the Tories had stayed in power and blocked devolution I think we'd have seen a constitutional crisis and quite probably Scottish independence. The decade to 2007 already saw the strongest growth in GDP and employment that we had seen for decades, or since, so I doubt that your hypothetical Tory government would have done much better than what we actually saw. And we'd have had even laxer financial regulation so the GFC might well have had a worse effect on us. No BOE independence either, so probably higher inflation. Maybe no Brexit, but presumably for Brexiteers like yourself that's a bad thing, still?
Brexit wasn't the black and white thing you make it out to be.
It was a fringe position pre-Lisbon because many of us were comfortable with the EU as it was pre-Lisbon and sans euro.
Personally, I never liked the Maastricht Treaty, but if rejecting Lisbon had led us to formalising an semi-detached/associate member position in 2007-08 why would I have voted for Brexit?
The only fly in the ointment would be free movement but I think the Tories would have approached that differently as well.
We already had a semi-detached relationship, though, with opt outs from the euro and Schengen.
I've noticed a tendency for people to underestimate how close the TCA relationship is in global trade terms. The way some talk, you'd think we were in 'no deal' land.
Some truth in this. It would to understand via some visual chart how it compares with various global deals, for eg EU-Canada, NAFTA, Aus-NZ, EEA etc.
My Mum and Dad are thinking of getting solar added to a roof. If any PBers have any websites/leads/useful info to share, that would be much appreciated.
Okay, they're not Leclerc main battle tanks, but the AMX-10 RC looks enough like a 'tank' (armour, big barrel at front) to fit into the slot on the journalist's recognition book.
Incidentally, we used to call wheeled versions of tracked excavators "rubber ducks".
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
We were all a lot better off by 2010 than we had been in 1997.
And many people are going to find they were better off in 2010 than they will be by GE24.
This means nothing unless you can argue (credibly) that Labour will make sure everyone is much better off by 2030 than they would otherwise be under the Tories.
You can't keep referring back to golden economic years from 1997 to 2007 and putting that down to "Labour". They were almost unique circumstances with a golden economy legacy, a huge boon from 1st wave globalisation and a massive asset boom.
That might conceivably be true but the implication is it doesn't matter who is in power, it's the events outside the control of government that matter.
Or I suppose you could take it one stage further and say, the economy did well under Labour but would have been better still had the Tories been in power 1997-2010 and the economy has been shite since 2010 but would have been more shite under Labour.
Personally I feel the government does make a difference.
What is the counter-factual had the Tories been in power 1997-2007?
I think lower taxes, higher employment, lower immigration, no devolution, and a much more market-led approach to public services. More rapid economic growth prior to the GFC is my guess, and in incomes too, but probably also blindsided by it as well just as Brown was.
I also doubt we'd have signed the Lisbon Treaty, which would have led to a renegotiation, so no Brexit.
If the Tories had stayed in power and blocked devolution I think we'd have seen a constitutional crisis and quite probably Scottish independence. The decade to 2007 already saw the strongest growth in GDP and employment that we had seen for decades, or since, so I doubt that your hypothetical Tory government would have done much better than what we actually saw. And we'd have had even laxer financial regulation so the GFC might well have had a worse effect on us. No BOE independence either, so probably higher inflation. Maybe no Brexit, but presumably for Brexiteers like yourself that's a bad thing, still?
Brexit wasn't the black and white thing you make it out to be.
It was a fringe position pre-Lisbon because many of us were comfortable with the EU as it was pre-Lisbon and sans euro.
Personally, I never liked the Maastricht Treaty, but if rejecting Lisbon had led us to formalising an semi-detached/associate member position in 2007-08 why would I have voted for Brexit?
The only fly in the ointment would be free movement but I think the Tories would have approached that differently as well.
We already had a semi-detached relationship, though, with opt outs from the euro and Schengen.
I've noticed a tendency for people to underestimate how close the TCA relationship is in global trade terms. The way some talk, you'd think we were in 'no deal' land.
We have a more distant economic relationship with the EU than any other country in Europe, except maybe Russia. I would humbly suggest that trying to recast the TCA as a close relationship is not going to be a fertile line of argument for you.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
There’s also a view that “no garden” is sub-par.
It is not beyond the wit of the British to design 6 floor towers, with balconies, around a garden square.
Indeed this may be preferable to the scrubby tip-heap seemingly the norm for many gardens.
You ever tried to sell a terraced house or maisonette without a garden?
I have. People hate it.
Brits want a house and garden. Their own castle. Our culture.
It probably also drags us in a property owning conservative direction overall, sorry.
OK, so Donalds reaches 20 - the rebels still hold firm
But no gain for the "true" wing-nuts. On THIS round.
My guess is that the anti-Kevinite strategists wanted to see IF they'd get any volunteers for their side for rollcall #4.
AND that they may play one or more of their remaining "sleepers" in #5
A lady from Indiana deliberately abstained having supported McC yesterday
Kevin McCarthy opined late yesterday, about possibility of GOPers voting "Present" or not at all, as a possible path to his victory.
However, his assumed that such non-votes would come from ranks of his overt GOP opponents, NOT his own hide.
Can't he count? He's behind and needs positive votes to win. Another candidate for more math(s) tuition!
Rumour is that the McCarthyites have opened talks with the Dems. If there are concessions the Dems can win, they're surely worth taking, since sooner or later the Reps will elect a Speaker and the reputational damage to the Reps is now already done?
OK, so Donalds reaches 20 - the rebels still hold firm
But no gain for the "true" wing-nuts. On THIS round.
My guess is that the anti-Kevinite strategists wanted to see IF they'd get any volunteers for their side for rollcall #4.
AND that they may play one or more of their remaining "sleepers" in #5
A lady from Indiana deliberately abstained having supported McC yesterday
Kevin McCarthy opined late yesterday, about possibility of GOPers voting "Present" or not at all, as a possible path to his victory.
However, his assumed that such non-votes would come from ranks of his overt GOP opponents, NOT his own hide.
But how does that help? Even then the Dem (who has more votes than him) would win the Speakership - which assuming the Dems stay disciplined at 212 votes happens when 10 non-Dems (either McCarthy-ites or rebels) simply vote "Present" instead of for anyone specifically.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
Fun as the McCarthy saga has been it needs a new twist to keep interest. I still think one of the 20 holdouts should vote for the Democrat just as a goof (making sure none of the others do and accidentally put the Dem over the line).
I do enjoy procedural shenanigans. I think I read on wiki once about the US congress (or possibly a state House), where people would be present but just refuse to answer a roll call, so they never reached quorum, until a frustrated Speaker essentially declared 'I can see you here, so answer or not I'm counting you as present'.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
People are people, not units.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
There’s also a view that “no garden” is sub-par.
It is not beyond the wit of the British to design 6 floor towers, with balconies, around a garden square.
Indeed this may be preferable to the scrubby tip-heap seemingly the norm for many gardens.
You ever tried to sell a terraced house or maisonette without a garden?
I have. People hate it.
Brits want a house and garden. Their own castle. Our culture.
It probably also drags us in a property owning conservative direction overall, sorry.
Well there isn’t enough of it, so sorry back.
So at some level Britain needs to accept it can build not enough two story “executive” Barratt Homes AND grow increasingly poorer, or try something else.
New York was all about terraced housing until some smart entrepreneurs realised about 1890 that luxury apartments could be a thing.
By 1920 the apartment was ubiquitous in the smartest districts in the city.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
People are people, not units.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
Sad to see this. English exceptionism dressed up as a human truth. This is why you can’t have nice things.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK has problems? You'll never make it to Cabinet with that attitude.
OK, so Donalds reaches 20 - the rebels still hold firm
But no gain for the "true" wing-nuts. On THIS round.
My guess is that the anti-Kevinite strategists wanted to see IF they'd get any volunteers for their side for rollcall #4.
AND that they may play one or more of their remaining "sleepers" in #5
A lady from Indiana deliberately abstained having supported McC yesterday
Kevin McCarthy opined late yesterday, about possibility of GOPers voting "Present" or not at all, as a possible path to his victory.
However, his assumed that such non-votes would come from ranks of his overt GOP opponents, NOT his own hide.
But how does that help? Even then the Dem (who has more votes than him) would win the Speakership - which assuming the Dems stay disciplined at 212 votes happens when 10 non-Dems (either McCarthy-ites or rebels) simply vote "Present" instead of for anyone specifically.
Both Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner each won one of their Speakerships because some members of their own party voted "Present".
AND note this
McCarthy floats path to Speakership with lower vote threshold
House GOP Speaker nominee Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) expressed optimism about winning the gavel Tuesday night as he emerged from meetings with allied members following three failed ballots, floating the possibility of winning the post with fewer than 218 votes.
“You’re sitting at 202 votes, so you need technically just 11 more votes to win,” McCarthy said.
“Democrats have 212 votes. You get 213 votes, and the others don’t say another name, that’s how you can win. You can win with 218. You could win with 222. But if you want to look at how you have to go about doing it,” McCarthy said.
The House Speaker is elected by a majority of all those voting for a specific Speaker candidate, not necessarily all members. Those voting “present” and those who are absent do not count toward that total, lowering the threshold.
Former House Speakers Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio) each won the Speakership with just 216 votes in 2021 and 2015, respectively. . . .
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
People are people, not units.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
Sad to see this. English exceptionism dressed up as a human truth. This is why you can’t have nice things.
Is there something particularly English about that exceptionalism? Is it even exceptionalism? Might just be a wrong opinion.
Okay, they're not Leclerc main battle tanks, but the AMX-10 RC looks enough like a 'tank' (armour, big barrel at front) to fit into the slot on the journalist's recognition book.
Incidentally, we used to call wheeled versions of tracked excavators "rubber ducks".
That's a medium velocity 105 on moderately light armoured car. God help anyone trying to use that as a tank against anything armed with a anything nastier than a 23mm cannon....
OK, so Donalds reaches 20 - the rebels still hold firm
But no gain for the "true" wing-nuts. On THIS round.
My guess is that the anti-Kevinite strategists wanted to see IF they'd get any volunteers for their side for rollcall #4.
AND that they may play one or more of their remaining "sleepers" in #5
A lady from Indiana deliberately abstained having supported McC yesterday
Kevin McCarthy opined late yesterday, about possibility of GOPers voting "Present" or not at all, as a possible path to his victory.
However, his assumed that such non-votes would come from ranks of his overt GOP opponents, NOT his own hide.
Can't he count? He's behind and needs positive votes to win. Another candidate for more math(s) tuition!
Rumour is that the McCarthyites have opened talks with the Dems. If there are concessions the Dems can win, they're surely worth taking, since sooner or later the Reps will elect a Speaker and the reputational damage to the Reps is now already done?
Believe all this talk of Reps + Dems = McCarthy is the reddest of red herrings.
Edit - Mostly designed to scare the wing-nuts back into line. . A flawed strategy at best . . . but then flawed strategy is a KMcC specialty.
Is there anyone left - especially those of us who actually need to use trains - who thinks that they are anything other than total shit? I don't travel long distances that often and I'm still left tonight contemplating the likely need to learn to drive and shoulder the enormous expense of a car, just so I don't end up spending the rest of my days marooned in my home town or reliant on taxis.
Either they are made to work or the subsidies should stop, and if that means no more trains, ripping up the tracks and building more roads then so be it. They're no use to man or beast as things stand. The pantomime shouldn't be allowed to go on and on endlessly like this.
Is there anyone left - especially those of us who actually need to use trains - who thinks that they are anything other than total shit? I don't travel long distances that often and I'm still left tonight contemplating the likely need to learn to drive and shoulder the enormous expense of a car, just so I don't end up spending the rest of my days marooned in my home town or reliant on taxis.
Either they are made to work or the subsidies should stop, and if that means no more trains, ripping up the tracks and building more roads then so be it. They're no use to man or beast as things stand. The pantomime shouldn't be allowed to go on and on endlessly like this.
As a frequent train user I can say using the trains is a bit like sex with the ex.
It's great for the first five minutes (ahem maybe 10 mins) and then you wonder why on earth you bothered then you are filled with regret for ages, vowing never again.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
Is there anyone left - especially those of us who actually need to use trains - who thinks that they are anything other than total shit? I don't travel long distances that often and I'm still left tonight contemplating the likely need to learn to drive and shoulder the enormous expense of a car, just so I don't end up spending the rest of my days marooned in my home town or reliant on taxis.
Either they are made to work or the subsidies should stop, and if that means no more trains, ripping up the tracks and building more roads then so be it. They're no use to man or beast as things stand. The pantomime shouldn't be allowed to go on and on endlessly like this.
This is a good example of penny wise pound foolish policy by the UK government.
If train infrastructure is allowed to fail, people will take to the roads and clog them up. The resultant congestion then creates additional costs on everybody, and pollution besides.
Fun as the McCarthy saga has been it needs a new twist to keep interest. I still think one of the 20 holdouts should vote for the Democrat just as a goof (making sure none of the others do and accidentally put the Dem over the line).
I do enjoy procedural shenanigans. I think I read on wiki once about the US congress (or possibly a state House), where people would be present but just refuse to answer a roll call, so they never reached quorum, until a frustrated Speaker essentially declared 'I can see you here, so answer or not I'm counting you as present'.
This may be a laugh, but it is NOT a joke.
And any Republican who treated it as such, would have her or his fool head handed to them.
As for your 2nd para, the Speaker in question was Thomas Reed, whose Reed's Rules of Order is still part of the official US House rules.
He was NOT frustrated when he made his famous ruling against the "disappearing quorum".
Instead, Reed acted in a very cool, calm, collected and above all strategic manner.
Based on the Golden Rule of the US House = majority rule.
Kevin McCarthy's problem today - and maybe tomorrow - is that he does NOT have a majority behind him.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
People don't generally respond to 'you could be even worse off in X' arguments, even when it is true. Pointing to poverty levels in Somalia wouldn't cut ice with campaigners against poverty here, nor should it, and whilst not as severe an issue pointing out they pay more tax elsewhere in comparable nations won't achieve much either. Even if it has long been noted the British public want a lot of things without wanting to be taxed to pay for it.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
What I’d love but nobody will ever do is a massive new city, from scratch, 1m+ inhabitants. Infrastructure, beautiful housing, business and leisure facilities, 100% renewable, 15% corporate tax rate and 20% income tax. Build it somewhere that will welcome the investment, or even better somewhere reclaimed from the sea. Like they do in the Gulf.
One of those every three years is required.
Just to keep up.
Lots of housing is built every year in the UK. 180k new housing starts in the year to June. (And that's for England.)
Some are, some aren't. As is often said, if you can book in advance and travel off-peak, there are plenty of deals to be had. The problem is many people decide or discover they are travelling when they need to travel and it's the "walk up" bookings on the day which are, I agree, very expensive.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
What I’d love but nobody will ever do is a massive new city, from scratch, 1m+ inhabitants. Infrastructure, beautiful housing, business and leisure facilities, 100% renewable, 15% corporate tax rate and 20% income tax. Build it somewhere that will welcome the investment, or even better somewhere reclaimed from the sea. Like they do in the Gulf.
One of those every three years is required.
Just to keep up.
Lots of housing is built every year in the UK. 180k new housing starts in the year to June. (And that's for England.)
Indeed, if you look at council tax stock across the UK as a proxy for the number of additional dwellings, you see it's been rising at well over 200k per year for the last five years. If you assume an average of 2.2 people per dwelling then housing is actually being built faster than the number of people in the country is increasing.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
There’s also a view that “no garden” is sub-par.
It is not beyond the wit of the British to design 6 floor towers, with balconies, around a garden square.
Indeed this may be preferable to the scrubby tip-heap seemingly the norm for many gardens.
You ever tried to sell a terraced house or maisonette without a garden?
I have. People hate it.
Brits want a house and garden. Their own castle. Our culture.
It probably also drags us in a property owning conservative direction overall, sorry.
Well there isn’t enough of it, so sorry back.
So at some level Britain needs to accept it can build not enough two story “executive” Barratt Homes AND grow increasingly poorer, or try something else.
New York was all about terraced housing until some smart entrepreneurs realised about 1890 that luxury apartments could be a thing.
By 1920 the apartment was ubiquitous in the smartest districts in the city.
THE FUTURE of Britain lay in Europe, John Major said in his speech on Thursday, but the character of Britain would 'survive unamendable in all essentials'. Fifty years from now, said the Prime Minister, Britain 'will still be the country of long shadows on county (cricket) grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers'.
What an odd detail from the BBC With no Speaker and no functioning House at the moment, networks get to control their own cameras in the chambers.
But normally, the video and audio that's broadcast from the chambers is originated from, and carefully controlled by, the House (and the Senate). These are then fed to networks, such as C-SPAN, who play out what is given to them.
So even the operational workings of the House, like camera operation, cannot continue as is, but require the new House to be formally functioning?
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
People are people, not units.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
Sad to see this. English exceptionism dressed up as a human truth. This is why you can’t have nice things.
You seem to think you know best on tax, housing and spending.
It's why people will rapidly tire of the left once in government.
CNN reporting that the new abstainer from Indiana is planning to run for a Senate nomination and is looking to get through a Republican primary
Only been in the House 2 years and already looking to jump ship, for shame.
Ain't "jumping ship"! Instead, moving from steerage to 1st class cabin.
The House is a mob. The Senate is a club.
Quite apart from anything else only having to face reelection every 6 years would be worth it, even if you still have to spend a lot of time begging for campaign money.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
There’s also a view that “no garden” is sub-par.
It is not beyond the wit of the British to design 6 floor towers, with balconies, around a garden square.
Indeed this may be preferable to the scrubby tip-heap seemingly the norm for many gardens.
You ever tried to sell a terraced house or maisonette without a garden?
I have. People hate it.
Brits want a house and garden. Their own castle. Our culture.
It probably also drags us in a property owning conservative direction overall, sorry.
Well there isn’t enough of it, so sorry back.
So at some level Britain needs to accept it can build not enough two story “executive” Barratt Homes AND grow increasingly poorer, or try something else.
New York was all about terraced housing until some smart entrepreneurs realised about 1890 that luxury apartments could be a thing.
By 1920 the apartment was ubiquitous in the smartest districts in the city.
THE FUTURE of Britain lay in Europe, John Major said in his speech on Thursday, but the character of Britain would 'survive unamendable in all essentials'. Fifty years from now, said the Prime Minister, Britain 'will still be the country of long shadows on county (cricket) grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers'.
1993 and complete bollocks then, more so now.
Warm beer, invincible green suburbs and dog lovers is all true.
Long shadows on county cricket grounds is something I like, but probably a tad more niche.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
People are people, not units.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
Sad to see this. English exceptionism dressed up as a human truth. This is why you can’t have nice things.
You seem to think you know best on tax, housing and spending.
It's why people will rapidly tire of the left once in government.
Er, isn't the whole point of any government that they think they know best on tax, housing, spending, and anything else? And then advance policies to do what they think is best.
If anyone wnats to see the biggest cheat in Horse Racing watch the riding of Kraken Power in the 3.20 at Newcastle today. Paul Mulrennan should be banned for life.
As someone who has no knowledge and no interest in horse racing I decided that I should watch the video expecting to see some blatant cheating. Watched the video and from my perspective with no knowledge I couldn't see anything wrong. Read the summary and whilst I know I am reading English I do not understand it. I know understand again why I have no interest in horse racing.
It doesn't look good to me. He backs right off and then gets going again but it's too late to catch the leaders.
In my 40 years of following horse racing this is the worse I have seen, With 2 furlongs to go he was in 3rd and cantering, with 1 furlong to go he had pulled the horse back to be 2 lengths last. When all chance had gone he let the horse run and it came flying through. Its the most obvious cheat I have ever seen.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
CNN reporting that the new abstainer from Indiana is planning to run for a Senate nomination and is looking to get through a Republican primary
Only been in the House 2 years and already looking to jump ship, for shame.
Ain't "jumping ship"! Instead, moving from steerage to 1st class cabin.
The House is a mob. The Senate is a club.
Quite apart from anything else only having to face reelection every 6 years would be worth it, even if you still have to spend a lot of time begging for campaign money.
That is one factor in the well-known political disease known as "senatitis" (sp?) which afflicts federal AND state representatives, who look longingly at the perks & etc., etc. of senator state & fed.
Fun as the McCarthy saga has been it needs a new twist to keep interest. I still think one of the 20 holdouts should vote for the Democrat just as a goof (making sure none of the others do and accidentally put the Dem over the line).
I do enjoy procedural shenanigans. I think I read on wiki once about the US congress (or possibly a state House), where people would be present but just refuse to answer a roll call, so they never reached quorum, until a frustrated Speaker essentially declared 'I can see you here, so answer or not I'm counting you as present'.
This may be a laugh, but it is NOT a joke.
And any Republican who treated it as such, would have her or his fool head handed to them.
As for your 2nd para, the Speaker in question was Thomas Reed, whose Reed's Rules of Order is still part of the official US House rules.
He was NOT frustrated when he made his famous ruling against the "disappearing quorum".
Instead, Reed acted in a very cool, calm, collected and above all strategic manner.
Based on the Golden Rule of the US House = majority rule.
Kevin McCarthy's problem today - and maybe tomorrow - is that he does NOT have a majority behind him.
Ok, we must all be serious - they could nominate Trump as their McCarthy opponent then? Sure he hasn't asked for that, and no one seriously seems to think they ever would elect someone not in the House, but it'd be serious under their own terms.
Is there anyone left - especially those of us who actually need to use trains - who thinks that they are anything other than total shit? I don't travel long distances that often and I'm still left tonight contemplating the likely need to learn to drive and shoulder the enormous expense of a car, just so I don't end up spending the rest of my days marooned in my home town or reliant on taxis.
Either they are made to work or the subsidies should stop, and if that means no more trains, ripping up the tracks and building more roads then so be it. They're no use to man or beast as things stand. The pantomime shouldn't be allowed to go on and on endlessly like this.
As a frequent train user I can say using the trains is a bit like sex with the ex.
It's great for the first five minutes (ahem maybe 10 mins) and then you wonder why on earth you bothered then you are filled with regret for ages, vowing never again.
Okay, they're not Leclerc main battle tanks, but the AMX-10 RC looks enough like a 'tank' (armour, big barrel at front) to fit into the slot on the journalist's recognition book.
Incidentally, we used to call wheeled versions of tracked excavators "rubber ducks".
That's a medium velocity 105 on moderately light armoured car. God help anyone trying to use that as a tank against anything armed with a anything nastier than a 23mm cannon....
Indeed, but they're probably still very, very useful.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
People may not be units but the properties in which they live definitely are especially to builders, developers and estate agents. Profit isn't derived from low-density picture-perfect houses with plenty of space, regrettably.
That's as much to do with issues we've chewed over on here many times before - the supply of land, the planning process etc. The fact is, however, round my part of East London, the Units and especially those for rental are being taken up very fast with all the consequences for local economies and infrastructures.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
People don't generally respond to 'you could be even worse off in X' arguments, even when it is true. Pointing to poverty levels in Somalia wouldn't cut ice with campaigners against poverty here, nor should it, and whilst not as severe an issue pointing out they pay more tax elsewhere in comparable nations won't achieve much either. Even if it has long been noted the British public want a lot of things without wanting to be taxed to pay for it.
That’s fine, but facts are facts and Driver’s assertion is incorrect.
Is there anyone left - especially those of us who actually need to use trains - who thinks that they are anything other than total shit? I don't travel long distances that often and I'm still left tonight contemplating the likely need to learn to drive and shoulder the enormous expense of a car, just so I don't end up spending the rest of my days marooned in my home town or reliant on taxis.
Either they are made to work or the subsidies should stop, and if that means no more trains, ripping up the tracks and building more roads then so be it. They're no use to man or beast as things stand. The pantomime shouldn't be allowed to go on and on endlessly like this.
This is a good example of penny wise pound foolish policy by the UK government.
If train infrastructure is allowed to fail, people will take to the roads and clog them up. The resultant congestion then creates additional costs on everybody, and pollution besides.
Yes, I'm sure in twenty-five or fifty years' time they could construct a system that's efficient and reliable, but a lot of us are already long since out of patience and past the point of caring whose fault all of this is meant to be. The straw that's broken the camel's back for me is a solid week of strikes immediately followed, on a day when the wretched bloody shitty heaps of festering dung ought actually to be running something approximately normally for the one and only day this fucking month, with "planned engineering works." In short, a relatively straightforward journey, to an event planned a year in advance, that ought to take about an hour will instead take three-and-a-half. In each direction. Tickets to event straight in bin, and we're stuck at home on Sunday instead.
Between fucked up rail excuses, bad weather excuses, broken down train excuses, no staff excuses, digging up the tracks every other weekend and absolutely endless fucking strikes, it's completely impossible to rely on trains to get you from anywhere to anywhere at any time, ever. And the ultimate insult is that the railways are simultaneously subsidised with telephone number sums of money to provide an as good as non-existent service *and* the bloody prices are going up again in the Spring. Enough. Make the bloody things work - this year, not in 2075 - or get rid.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
They exist though, and so does Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, etc etc etc.
Think this holiday season has seen the tipping point. We were discussing the (admittedly unlikely) possibility of another Tory majority just before Christmas. We are all now talking about the next Labour government. It seems the country met over lavish dinners and, as the alcohol flowed, everyone agreed everything was falling apart.
Fun as the McCarthy saga has been it needs a new twist to keep interest. I still think one of the 20 holdouts should vote for the Democrat just as a goof (making sure none of the others do and accidentally put the Dem over the line).
I do enjoy procedural shenanigans. I think I read on wiki once about the US congress (or possibly a state House), where people would be present but just refuse to answer a roll call, so they never reached quorum, until a frustrated Speaker essentially declared 'I can see you here, so answer or not I'm counting you as present'.
This may be a laugh, but it is NOT a joke.
And any Republican who treated it as such, would have her or his fool head handed to them.
As for your 2nd para, the Speaker in question was Thomas Reed, whose Reed's Rules of Order is still part of the official US House rules.
He was NOT frustrated when he made his famous ruling against the "disappearing quorum".
Instead, Reed acted in a very cool, calm, collected and above all strategic manner.
Based on the Golden Rule of the US House = majority rule.
Kevin McCarthy's problem today - and maybe tomorrow - is that he does NOT have a majority behind him.
Ok, we must all be serious - they could nominate Trump as their McCarthy opponent then? Sure he hasn't asked for that, and no one seriously seems to think they ever would elect someone not in the House, but it'd be serious under their own terms.
Am beginning to think that Trump is becoming a busted flush.
Certainly his ability to sway even the likes of Lauren Freaking Boebert is telling.
So floating HIS name as Speaker, would be strictly comic relief, of kind that would NOT tickle many MAGA-maniac funny-bones.
Think this holiday season has seen the tipping point. We were discussing the (admittedly unlikely) possibility of another Tory majority just before Christmas. We are all now talking about the next Labour government. It seems the country met over lavish dinners and, as the alcohol flowed, everyone agreed everything was falling apart.
Read yesterday or this morning (can't remember which) that Labour focus groups report increasingly large numbers of people complaining that nothing works in this country. That's not quite true - the electricity, for the time being, is still on - but it's not very far from the truth, either. Britain is a basket case, north to south, east to west. I don't think we're quite Third World yet but we're not far off it.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
No I didn’t say that.
I just think that it’s preposterous to say “we would do well to remember higher taxes crowd out…”
Decades of economic experience does not support you, you’ve been weaned on too much Telegraph.
I would argue the underlying economic model (market versus statist), labour flexibility, property rights, treatment of investment costs and various other things are more impactful than the raw percentage of GDP taken in tax.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Most just want to be able to afford somewhere. London has shown that people will willingly rein in their space demands if the market demands it. I was delighted with the size of our garden here in the inner suburbs but if I were searching in a nice village in Wiltshire I’d want something 5 times as big.
Why has this been off-topiced?
As I will insist to my grave, London is very low rise compared to its European and American peers.
There is plenty of room between Hounslow and Southend-on-Sea for half a million new houses a year without touching Wiltshire.
But to do it, government needs to
1. Make this an explicit policy aim 2. Provide the transport and other infrastructure necessary to support it 3. Relax or otherwise evolve the planning laws to allow people to go up.
As an owner of a non-listed (albeit in a conservation area), low rise house less than two miles of Bank, I would also be a big winner from such a policy, but that is neither here nor there.
I would raze Fulham, and then raise it.
Fulham is a great example.
Row upon row of two story terraces of only modest architectural appeal.
I would not raze it per se, I would have a general principle that people can build up to six floors if they accept a published pattern etc etc.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
Eh?
The latter is the use of usually inappropriate and extreme historical analogy that typically sinks any chance of further objective or rational discussion.
The former are actual current day nations who regularly top the table for various indicators of social and economic wellbeing.
Think this holiday season has seen the tipping point. We were discussing the (admittedly unlikely) possibility of another Tory majority just before Christmas. We are all now talking about the next Labour government. It seems the country met over lavish dinners and, as the alcohol flowed, everyone agreed everything was falling apart.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
People are people, not units.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
Sad to see this. English exceptionism dressed up as a human truth. This is why you can’t have nice things.
You seem to think you know best on tax, housing and spending.
It's why people will rapidly tire of the left once in government.
Er, isn't the whole point of any government that they think they know best on tax, housing, spending, and anything else? And then advance policies to do what they think is best.
Casino is an intelligent guy and I think realises on some level that he’s been supporting a broken model all his adult life.
If anyone wnats to see the biggest cheat in Horse Racing watch the riding of Kraken Power in the 3.20 at Newcastle today. Paul Mulrennan should be banned for life.
As someone who has no knowledge and no interest in horse racing I decided that I should watch the video expecting to see some blatant cheating. Watched the video and from my perspective with no knowledge I couldn't see anything wrong. Read the summary and whilst I know I am reading English I do not understand it. I know understand again why I have no interest in horse racing.
It doesn't look good to me. He backs right off and then gets going again but it's too late to catch the leaders.
In my 40 years of following horse racing this is the worse I have seen, With 2 furlongs to go he was in 3rd and cantering, with 1 furlong to go he had pulled the horse back to be 2 lengths last. When all chance had gone he let the horse run and it came flying through. Its the most obvious cheat I have ever seen.
Mulrennan's mistake was to get caught behind two weakening outsiders at a key moment - the two he tracked (who finished last and last but one) fell back as the rest of the field moved forward leaving Mulrennan trapped at the back. That was poor judgement but calling it a "cheat" is a bit of a stretch.
Horse racing may not be as honest as Pro Wrestling but it's a lot cleaner than football or cricket (perhaps).
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
Weird argument
There are no flying mammals
What about bats?
Bats are the Godwin's law of the flying mammal debate.
The best evidence is from the US where you can compare states with one another. It suggests that hiking taxes is less of a blow for business than business likes to claim.
If anyone wnats to see the biggest cheat in Horse Racing watch the riding of Kraken Power in the 3.20 at Newcastle today. Paul Mulrennan should be banned for life.
As someone who has no knowledge and no interest in horse racing I decided that I should watch the video expecting to see some blatant cheating. Watched the video and from my perspective with no knowledge I couldn't see anything wrong. Read the summary and whilst I know I am reading English I do not understand it. I know understand again why I have no interest in horse racing.
It doesn't look good to me. He backs right off and then gets going again but it's too late to catch the leaders.
In my 40 years of following horse racing this is the worse I have seen, With 2 furlongs to go he was in 3rd and cantering, with 1 furlong to go he had pulled the horse back to be 2 lengths last. When all chance had gone he let the horse run and it came flying through. Its the most obvious cheat I have ever seen.
Mulrennan's mistake was to get caught behind two weakening outsiders at a key moment - the two he tracked (who finished last and last but one) fell back as the rest of the field moved forward leaving Mulrennan trapped at the back. That was poor judgement but calling it a "cheat" is a bit of a stretch.
Horse racing may not be as honest as Pro Wrestling but it's a lot cleaner than football or cricket (perhaps).
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
Weird argument
There are no flying mammals
What about bats?
Bats are the Godwin's law of the flying mammal debate.
The best evidence is from the US where you can compare states with one another. It suggests that hiking taxes is less of a blow for business than business likes to claim.
Indeed, the wealthiest states are the highest taxing.
Having said that, California and New York both lost population last year to Florida and Arizona etc.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
Weird argument
There are no flying mammals
What about bats?
Bats are the Godwin's law of the flying mammal debate.
The best evidence is from the US where you can compare states with one another. It suggests that hiking taxes is less of a blow for business than business likes to claim.
I'm not sure that's true. The tax rates are surely set competitively, so states with big businesses that can't flee get to set higher taxes. But at the margin, you see jobs slowly leak from CA/NY to TX/FL.
Must say, it suits me down to the ground, to have the faces and voices of the Republican Party - the active, aggressive GOP anyway - are the likes of Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert.
Plus George Santos. Who is THE perfect Poster Child for today's GOP (Grifters On Parade).
Based on McCarthy's brilliant "strategy" so far, reckon that his nominator for Roll Call #6 will be . . . wait for it . . . Marjorie Taylor Greene!
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
Weird argument
There are no flying mammals
What about bats?
Bats are the Godwin's law of the flying mammal debate.
The best evidence is from the US where you can compare states with one another. It suggests that hiking taxes is less of a blow for business than business likes to claim.
I'm not sure that's true. The tax rates are surely set competitively, so states with big businesses that can't flee get to set higher taxes. But at the margin, you see jobs slowly leak from CA/NY to TX/FL.
You can, yes. But this is a relatively recent phenomenon, and I would argue the greater driver is living costs, ie housing.
I may have mentioned a billion times I am a believe in the “housing theory of everything”?
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
No I didn’t say that.
I just think that it’s preposterous to say “we would do well to remember higher taxes crowd out…”
Decades of economic experience does not support you, you’ve been weaned on too much Telegraph.
I would argue the underlying economic model (market versus statist), labour flexibility, property rights, treatment of investment costs and various other things are more impactful than the raw percentage of GDP taken in tax.
In terms of the average tax payer the overall package matters. If by means of a fully functional welfare state you have high taxes but no need of health insurance, unemployment insurance, private pension or private education then you have more of your own income for discretionary spending. If you live in a lower tax state but need all these things on top of taxation to be secure then you have less spending money. Scandinavia perhaps hasn't hit that sweet spot but seems a lot closer to it than we are at the moment. Or America for that matter.
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
It is possible to achieve economic growth alongside high(er) levels of personal and corporate taxation. The argument however isn't about what works for Denmark, Belgium or Austria but what would work in the UK and as with so much else, we're caught between the European and American economic models and instead of taking the best bits of both to create the best country possible, we've somehow contrived to do something different.
You can't run a Scandinavian social welfare model on our levels of taxation - nor perhaps should we try. There's an argument the NHS is no longer fit for purpose but nor must we get to a point when a sick individual is unable to seek medical help because they can't afford to see a doctor.
The thing about tax is it isn't hypothecated - my money goes into the same pot as yours and pays for nuclear weapons, education and capital infrastructure as much as yours. I might prefer my taxation to be spent differently but democracy doesn't work that way.
That doesn't mean I don't want to get the deficit down and reduce the burden of debt to be passed on to future generations - the unsupportable borrowing of recent times was always going to have a reckoning, whether political or fiscal. Spending £120 billion on debt interest payments seems appalling - that £120 billion could and should be spent elsewhere (or perhaps given back as tax cuts).
If anyone wnats to see the biggest cheat in Horse Racing watch the riding of Kraken Power in the 3.20 at Newcastle today. Paul Mulrennan should be banned for life.
As someone who has no knowledge and no interest in horse racing I decided that I should watch the video expecting to see some blatant cheating. Watched the video and from my perspective with no knowledge I couldn't see anything wrong. Read the summary and whilst I know I am reading English I do not understand it. I know understand again why I have no interest in horse racing.
It doesn't look good to me. He backs right off and then gets going again but it's too late to catch the leaders.
In my 40 years of following horse racing this is the worse I have seen, With 2 furlongs to go he was in 3rd and cantering, with 1 furlong to go he had pulled the horse back to be 2 lengths last. When all chance had gone he let the horse run and it came flying through. Its the most obvious cheat I have ever seen.
Mulrennan's mistake was to get caught behind two weakening outsiders at a key moment - the two he tracked (who finished last and last but one) fell back as the rest of the field moved forward leaving Mulrennan trapped at the back. That was poor judgement but calling it a "cheat" is a bit of a stretch.
Horse racing may not be as honest as Pro Wrestling but it's a lot cleaner than football or cricket (perhaps).
Why did he pull the horse to 2 lengths last from 3rd with 2 furlongs to go, there was no need to do that at all, the whole left side of the course was available. He had a horse full of running, he could have just pulled his horse to the left and he would have won easily yet he decided to pull his horse to 2 lengths last. You can actually see him look up and see he had no chance before he let the horse run.
I have also never seen such a reaction to a ride on the Betfair Forum.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
Weird argument
There are no flying mammals
What about bats?
Bats are the Godwin's law of the flying mammal debate.
The best evidence is from the US where you can compare states with one another. It suggests that hiking taxes is less of a blow for business than business likes to claim.
I'm not sure that's true. The tax rates are surely set competitively, so states with big businesses that can't flee get to set higher taxes. But at the margin, you see jobs slowly leak from CA/NY to TX/FL.
You can, yes. But this is a relatively recent phenomenon, and I would argue the greater driver is living costs, ie housing.
I may have mentioned a billion times I am a believe in the “housing theory of everything”?
Well, for the same reasons you can tax people more in captive labour markets, you can charge them more for housing. If I could create the next big corporate law firm or technology giant in Mississippi, it would make a lot more money than putting it in a mega-high cost area, but I can't. It's hard to identify which factor is prior to the others, and probably they all co-develop.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
They exist though, and so does Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, etc etc etc.
Wishing them away doesn’t get you anywhere.
Germany, Austria and the Netherlands don't tax anything like Scandinavian levels.
European taxes average at about 41.1%, not much higher than us. And we are mid-range.
The idea there is some vast tax goldmine here that's untapped is laughable.
If anyone wnats to see the biggest cheat in Horse Racing watch the riding of Kraken Power in the 3.20 at Newcastle today. Paul Mulrennan should be banned for life.
As someone who has no knowledge and no interest in horse racing I decided that I should watch the video expecting to see some blatant cheating. Watched the video and from my perspective with no knowledge I couldn't see anything wrong. Read the summary and whilst I know I am reading English I do not understand it. I know understand again why I have no interest in horse racing.
It doesn't look good to me. He backs right off and then gets going again but it's too late to catch the leaders.
In my 40 years of following horse racing this is the worse I have seen, With 2 furlongs to go he was in 3rd and cantering, with 1 furlong to go he had pulled the horse back to be 2 lengths last. When all chance had gone he let the horse run and it came flying through. Its the most obvious cheat I have ever seen.
Mulrennan's mistake was to get caught behind two weakening outsiders at a key moment - the two he tracked (who finished last and last but one) fell back as the rest of the field moved forward leaving Mulrennan trapped at the back. That was poor judgement but calling it a "cheat" is a bit of a stretch.
Horse racing may not be as honest as Pro Wrestling but it's a lot cleaner than football or cricket (perhaps).
I agree gaming a system is not same as cheating it, such as trying to avoid weight by not running till they are announced.
“Horse racing… it's a lot cleaner than football or cricket (perhaps).” Really?
I had a win on big bear last season. The bear later stripped of that win being a drug cheat. The Horse denied it, said it stayed at grandma’s and by mistake ate some fortified hay she kept in the barn.
Warmed over socialism, which will end up where socialism always ends up: with everyone worse off
But we have to endure this, the Tories have failed, and so we must go through the same process of experimenting with the left until it is proven that it does not work
Did Britain do something very bad to deserve all this?
I keep trying to warn about this, particularly those tempted by Starmer on the basis "things couldn't possibly be worse".
Of course, there are those who might be attracted by such a radical prospectus, but it's going to be very expensive, probably a drag on business & consumption, and thus growth, and we're all going to be paying an awful lot more tax.
I’m not sure what you are warning of here. This is a really promising policy offer, much of which is constantly demanded on here by left and right wing posters.
Shift taxes toward wealth.
Create a sovereign wealth fund and support domestic industry to reduce the balance of trade deficit.
Devolve power and second power to beefed up local government.
Improve R&D and capital investment to peer economy levels.
Maintain a balanced budget across the cycle.
Dismissing this as reheated 70s Labour or whatever is the sign of not paying attention.
Collective bargaining and action, and large extension of workers rights, is what worries me.
Also, the cost commitments they are listing there are vast, and current planned tax rises won't do it, so it will all put a huge burden on the economy.
I don’t think the cost commitments are vast and in any case nobody is now looking at the UK economy without diagnosing a chronic lack of investment.
I await the detail on collective bargaining. I would certainly welcome a modest tipping of the scales from capital to labour, though.
I think there's a huge amount buried in that with all sorts of things to come, including property and land taxes for ordinary homeowners and pension reliefs going.
What's been laid out there is probably £100bn+ pa of extra public spending.
The spending is necessary.
Britain feels highly taxed but that’s because the weight is on income rather than capital; it’s at the lower end of tax per GDP.
Housing and childcare reform to lower the costs of both would make a massive, massive impact. Tertiary fees, too.
Tax isn't a free lunch. It crowds out consumption and private investment, and we'd do well to remember that. It's also quite easy to make a long list of things that'd be solved by more spending and quite another to raise the funds.
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
No we would not do well to remember that. It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
Whatever the problems of the UK, they can't fairly be said to be the result of low tax. Because that would assume we have low tax.
The UK is (still) a low tax economy by western standards.
You seem to think there's an easy answer: to tax the UK into prosperity.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
The Scandinavian nations are prosperous
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
Weird argument
There are no flying mammals
What about bats?
Bats are the Godwin's law of the flying mammal debate.
The best evidence is from the US where you can compare states with one another. It suggests that hiking taxes is less of a blow for business than business likes to claim.
I'm not sure that's true. The tax rates are surely set competitively, so states with big businesses that can't flee get to set higher taxes. But at the margin, you see jobs slowly leak from CA/NY to TX/FL.
Nevertheless the ability of those on the winning end of any economic settlement to stand back, put all concerns of self-interest completely to one side, and objectively conclude that inequality and low taxation are the key to wider prosperity, never ceases to impress.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
There’s also a view that “no garden” is sub-par.
It is not beyond the wit of the British to design 6 floor towers, with balconies, around a garden square.
Indeed this may be preferable to the scrubby tip-heap seemingly the norm for many gardens.
These aren't six stories, but they show what could be done;
And what can be done now;
And people happily pay full whack for them. It's a bit Curtisland London, but it's baffling to me that we don't build more of these.
"Scandinavia" is the Godwin's law of the tax debate.
It is possible to achieve economic growth alongside high(er) levels of personal and corporate taxation. The argument however isn't about what works for Denmark, Belgium or Austria but what would work in the UK and as with so much else, we're caught between the European and American economic models and instead of taking the best bits of both to create the best country possible, we've somehow contrived to do something different.
You can't run a Scandinavian social welfare model on our levels of taxation - nor perhaps should we try. There's an argument the NHS is no longer fit for purpose but nor must we get to a point when a sick individual is unable to seek medical help because they can't afford to see a doctor.
The thing about tax is it isn't hypothecated - my money goes into the same pot as yours and pays for nuclear weapons, education and capital infrastructure as much as yours. I might prefer my taxation to be spent differently but democracy doesn't work that way.
That doesn't mean I don't want to get the deficit down and reduce the burden of debt to be passed on to future generations - the unsupportable borrowing of recent times was always going to have a reckoning, whether political or fiscal. Spending £120 billion on debt interest payments seems appalling - that £120 billion could and should be spent elsewhere (or perhaps given back as tax cuts).
High Scandinavian taxes here wouldn't work in the same way low Singapore taxes wouldn't. We are a large, complex and economically and socially diverse country, not a small, monolithic, and closely knit one.
There's not an economy in the world that's copied that model in either Europe, North America, or the wider world of comparable size to our own.
France and Germany come closest but, yes, they achieve that through much higher compulsory social insurance contributions not higher income tax - France tried it a few years ago under Hollande's 75% supertax and had to back pedal sharpish.
Think this holiday season has seen the tipping point. We were discussing the (admittedly unlikely) possibility of another Tory majority just before Christmas. We are all now talking about the next Labour government. It seems the country met over lavish dinners and, as the alcohol flowed, everyone agreed everything was falling apart.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
People are people, not units.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
Sad to see this. English exceptionism dressed up as a human truth. This is why you can’t have nice things.
You seem to think you know best on tax, housing and spending.
It's why people will rapidly tire of the left once in government.
Er, isn't the whole point of any government that they think they know best on tax, housing, spending, and anything else? And then advance policies to do what they think is best.
Casino is an intelligent guy and I think realises on some level that he’s been supporting a broken model all his adult life.
A lot of countries tax workers a lot and give generous benefits to non-workers or parents. That's just shifting spend from one household to another, and it doesn't have major economic impacts as long as the business can continue to hire at the high gross wage level. The Nordics manage it by hosting super-productive global exporters, and keeping taxes on companies and assets low. However, it's fair to say no large country can make enough money from global exports, as a share of national income, to make the trick work.
I agree that the Lib Dems need to front up with a loose roadmap back toward the single market.
I also think they need to find a way to square the circle on the nimbyism. It would need a log post or perhaps a thread-header to explain how, but at the top level we need both a commitment to push toward building (or, for the market to build) half a million houses a year AND a commitment to respecting local plans AND protection for the green belt besides.
So apple pie for everyone.
Next time I see someone campaigning on "No houses round 'ere", I will challenge their proven racism.
If I lived in a lovely village in Wiltshire or whatever I would also campaign against new housing.
The English (and probably British) “dream” is a Georgian rectory up a long driveway. But clearly, given the landmass and the population, that can’t happen for everyone.
We need to use state power to encourage building higher in towns and cities, essentially, and break up the housing builder oligopoly.
Trouble is, most people don't want to live that way.
As you say they want the house and garden.
Two catches though.
The key one is that people who already have houses and gardens are often too happy to deny those boons to other people, whose main mistake was to be born too late.
The subtler (and less certain one) is the idea that all this lowrise sprawl is horribly inefficient. As in, makes cities less good at generating wealth. A quick primer with pictures;
As with some other cherished beliefs on left and right, we do come back to the question- how seriously do we want the country to be rich? How much wealth are we prepared to throw away?
There’s also a view that “no garden” is sub-par.
It is not beyond the wit of the British to design 6 floor towers, with balconies, around a garden square.
Indeed this may be preferable to the scrubby tip-heap seemingly the norm for many gardens.
These aren't six stories, but they show what could be done;
And what can be done now;
And people happily pay full whack for them. It's a bit Curtisland London, but it's baffling to me that we don't build more of these.
I agree those are nice and much better than other high density development. They are also necessary in the UK. But man, the UK's population density really does constrain quality of life. It's just so much nicer to have your own plot of land with privacy that you can landscape as you want. It also avoids the dealing with management company bullshit that's always a headache.
Comments
Addendum - via NYT live blog:
Victoria Spartz, Republican of Indiana, voted present, leaving McCarthy with one less vote than yesterday. She previously voted for McCarthy three times.
However, his assumed that such non-votes would come from ranks of his overt GOP opponents, NOT his own hide.
It would to understand via some visual chart how it compares with various global deals, for eg EU-Canada, NAFTA, Aus-NZ, EEA etc.
https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/2308379-france-to-send-light-combat-vehicles-to-ukraine---elysee
Okay, they're not Leclerc main battle tanks, but the AMX-10 RC looks enough like a 'tank' (armour, big barrel at front) to fit into the slot on the journalist's recognition book.
Incidentally, we used to call wheeled versions of tracked excavators "rubber ducks".
I think we'd get high income and capital tax without the results.
I want to see government cutting back on drags like pensions and investing in things that raise productivity and grow the pie, and that includes competitive taxes. We can then afford more stuff.
I have. People hate it.
Brits want a house and garden. Their own castle. Our culture.
It probably also drags us in a property owning conservative direction overall, sorry.
Rumour is that the McCarthyites have opened talks with the Dems. If there are concessions the Dems can win, they're surely worth taking, since sooner or later the Reps will elect a Speaker and the reputational damage to the Reps is now already done?
It’s not borne out at the macro level, as far as I know.
Of course there are harmful taxes that disincentivise things we want, there may also be a correlation between high tax and dirigiste economic policy, but to just say, oh high tax is harmful is belied by the global data.
I could just as easily say low tax is bad and point to the shocking fate of the worst off in the USA, or the economic piss-poverty of the UK today.
I do enjoy procedural shenanigans. I think I read on wiki once about the US congress (or possibly a state House), where people would be present but just refuse to answer a roll call, so they never reached quorum, until a frustrated Speaker essentially declared 'I can see you here, so answer or not I'm counting you as present'.
They don't want to live on top of each other in the name of efficiency. Neither do they want endless sprawl and construction in their back yard.
They are both deeply human instincts. We need to work with the grain, not against it.
So at some level Britain needs to accept it can build not enough two story “executive” Barratt Homes AND grow increasingly poorer, or try something else.
New York was all about terraced housing until some smart entrepreneurs realised about 1890 that luxury apartments could be a thing.
By 1920 the apartment was ubiquitous in the smartest districts in the city.
English exceptionism dressed up as a human truth.
This is why you can’t have nice things.
AND note this
McCarthy floats path to Speakership with lower vote threshold
House GOP Speaker nominee Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) expressed optimism about winning the gavel Tuesday night as he emerged from meetings with allied members following three failed ballots, floating the possibility of winning the post with fewer than 218 votes.
“You’re sitting at 202 votes, so you need technically just 11 more votes to win,” McCarthy said.
“Democrats have 212 votes. You get 213 votes, and the others don’t say another name, that’s how you can win. You can win with 218. You could win with 222. But if you want to look at how you have to go about doing it,” McCarthy said.
The House Speaker is elected by a majority of all those voting for a specific Speaker candidate, not necessarily all members. Those voting “present” and those who are absent do not count toward that total, lowering the threshold.
Former House Speakers Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio) each won the Speakership with just 216 votes in 2021 and 2015, respectively. . . .
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3797676-mccarthy-floats-path-to-speakership-with-lower-vote-threshold/
Edit - Mostly designed to scare the wing-nuts back into line.
.
A flawed strategy at best . . . but then flawed strategy is a KMcC specialty.
Either they are made to work or the subsidies should stop, and if that means no more trains, ripping up the tracks and building more roads then so be it. They're no use to man or beast as things stand. The pantomime shouldn't be allowed to go on and on endlessly like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir6FyyceLv0
It's great for the first five minutes (ahem maybe 10 mins) and then you wonder why on earth you bothered then you are filled with regret for ages, vowing never again.
If train infrastructure is allowed to fail, people will take to the roads and clog them up. The resultant congestion then creates additional costs on everybody, and pollution besides.
And any Republican who treated it as such, would have her or his fool head handed to them.
As for your 2nd para, the Speaker in question was Thomas Reed, whose Reed's Rules of Order is still part of the official US House rules.
He was NOT frustrated when he made his famous ruling against the "disappearing quorum".
Instead, Reed acted in a very cool, calm, collected and above all strategic manner.
Based on the Golden Rule of the US House = majority rule.
Kevin McCarthy's problem today - and maybe tomorrow - is that he does NOT have a majority behind him.
The House is a mob. The Senate is a club.
1993 and complete bollocks then, more so now.
With no Speaker and no functioning House at the moment, networks get to control their own cameras in the chambers.
But normally, the video and audio that's broadcast from the chambers is originated from, and carefully controlled by, the House (and the Senate). These are then fed to networks, such as C-SPAN, who play out what is given to them.
So even the operational workings of the House, like camera operation, cannot continue as is, but require the new House to be formally functioning?
It's why people will rapidly tire of the left once in government.
Long shadows on county cricket grounds is something I like, but probably a tad more niche.
That's so much bullshit, as decades of economic experience from countries that have tried to do the same will attest to.
Incidentally, these Turkish vehicles have been seen in transit in Romania. I wonder where they might be heading?
https://twitter.com/walter_report/status/1610706076759998464
That's as much to do with issues we've chewed over on here many times before - the supply of land, the planning process etc. The fact is, however, round my part of East London, the Units and especially those for rental are being taken up very fast with all the consequences for local economies and infrastructures.
Yet another "true" right-wing pin-up.
Addendum - She just gave a piece of her mind AND specific instruction, to her "favorite President".
Who (strangely or not) is NOT Joe Biden
Between fucked up rail excuses, bad weather excuses, broken down train excuses, no staff excuses, digging up the tracks every other weekend and absolutely endless fucking strikes, it's completely impossible to rely on trains to get you from anywhere to anywhere at any time, ever. And the ultimate insult is that the railways are simultaneously subsidised with telephone number sums of money to provide an as good as non-existent service *and* the bloody prices are going up again in the Spring. Enough. Make the bloody things work - this year, not in 2075 - or get rid.
Wishing them away doesn’t get you anywhere.
We were discussing the (admittedly unlikely) possibility of another Tory majority just before Christmas.
We are all now talking about the next Labour government.
It seems the country met over lavish dinners and, as the alcohol flowed, everyone agreed everything was falling apart.
Seems pretty good compared to most of the country.
Certainly his ability to sway even the likes of Lauren Freaking Boebert is telling.
So floating HIS name as Speaker, would be strictly comic relief, of kind that would NOT tickle many MAGA-maniac funny-bones.
I just think that it’s preposterous to say “we would do well to remember higher taxes crowd out…”
Decades of economic experience does not support you, you’ve been weaned on too much Telegraph.
I would argue the underlying economic model (market versus statist), labour flexibility, property rights, treatment of investment costs and various other things are more impactful than the raw percentage of GDP taken in tax.
The latter is the use of usually inappropriate and extreme historical analogy that typically sinks any chance of further objective or rational discussion.
The former are actual current day nations who regularly top the table for various indicators of social and economic wellbeing.
She'll also assume it's a pistol in my pocket.
He’s just lashing out.
Horse racing may not be as honest as Pro Wrestling but it's a lot cleaner than football or cricket (perhaps).
There are no flying mammals
What about bats?
Bats are the Godwin's law of the flying mammal debate.
The best evidence is from the US where you can compare states with one another. It suggests that hiking taxes is less of a blow for business than business likes to claim.
Having said that, California and New York both lost population last year to Florida and Arizona etc.
Plus George Santos. Who is THE perfect Poster Child for today's GOP (Grifters On Parade).
Based on McCarthy's brilliant "strategy" so far, reckon that his nominator for Roll Call #6 will be . . . wait for it . . . Marjorie Taylor Greene!
I may have mentioned a billion times I am a believe in the “housing theory of everything”?
You can't run a Scandinavian social welfare model on our levels of taxation - nor perhaps should we try. There's an argument the NHS is no longer fit for purpose but nor must we get to a point when a sick individual is unable to seek medical help because they can't afford to see a doctor.
The thing about tax is it isn't hypothecated - my money goes into the same pot as yours and pays for nuclear weapons, education and capital infrastructure as much as yours. I might prefer my taxation to be spent differently but democracy doesn't work that way.
That doesn't mean I don't want to get the deficit down and reduce the burden of debt to be passed on to future generations - the unsupportable borrowing of recent times was always going to have a reckoning, whether political or fiscal. Spending £120 billion on debt interest payments seems appalling - that £120 billion could and should be spent elsewhere (or perhaps given back as tax cuts).
I have also never seen such a reaction to a ride on the Betfair Forum.
I had no financial interest in the race.
His government is going to be running a surplus before the next GE?
European taxes average at about 41.1%, not much higher than us. And we are mid-range.
The idea there is some vast tax goldmine here that's untapped is laughable.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/11469100/2-29102020-BP-EN.pdf/059a7672-ed6d-f12c-2b0e-10ab4b34ed07&ved=2ahUKEwiX76bf0K78AhWKJcAKHXQmC6wQFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2bqGEYpgbHvHIXjTa4mJNz
“Horse racing… it's a lot cleaner than football or cricket (perhaps).” Really?
I had a win on big bear last season. The bear later stripped of that win being a drug cheat. The Horse denied it, said it stayed at grandma’s and by mistake ate some fortified hay she kept in the barn.
And what can be done now;
And people happily pay full whack for them. It's a bit Curtisland London, but it's baffling to me that we don't build more of these.
I’m in the speaker's lobby peering into the chamber, and I can see a Republican member who is doing some shoe shopping on their phone.
God knows what Leon would look like after that episode.
There's not an economy in the world that's copied that model in either Europe, North America, or the wider world of comparable size to our own.
France and Germany come closest but, yes, they achieve that through much higher compulsory social insurance contributions not higher income tax - France tried it a few years ago under Hollande's 75% supertax and had to back pedal sharpish.
In [Boebert's] speech in Congress, she said Trump "needs to tell Kevin McCarthy, Sir you do not have the votes and it's time to withdraw".
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-64153397