Mr. Pioneers, entirely possible the PCP is almost ungovernable. Couple that with a less than happy situation economically and even a strong leader would find it a challenge.
It'll be interesting to see what Labour do when they inherit a bad situation. I suspect they'll try whacking the rich, drive many of them off, then bring in taxes on the middle class (or they might just glut on borrowing) for spending, some of which is much needed (judiciary).
My Labour years are receding into my past so I can't speak for them. But surely the thing that is missing is some basic maths. We have millions of people who are economically inactive because they can't afford to work, or don't see the point as it doesn't pay. Millions more whose reward for working long hours in demanding jobs is to have just enough money to be flat broke.
Our economic system is broken because of these groups. They do not have enough cash to consume. Which impacts productivity for those who do work, and tip more into inactivity or jobs that have no hope of ever giving them cash to consume with. At the same time we tip ever vaster amounts in to be syphoned out by the spiv class who need it to pay more donations to the Conservative Party.
So government must borrow. Invest. Receive a return on the investment. We have a list of things this country needs just to get back to a level playing field with neighbouring big economies. Announce a bazooka of investment into schools and teaching, into clean power generation & manufacturing, into road and rail and fibre broadband, into matched investment with the private sector in sectors we need like automotive and aerospace and pharmaceuticals and energy. Companies can keep their low taxes only if they invest in kit and people.
And find a way to get people spending. Not handing money over to spiv multinationals dodging taxes and profiteering from the energy crisis. Local business. Print money by issuing everyone with a debit card where the money can only be spent in local businesses...
To be honest this makes Truss's plans for growth look conservative. We simply do not have the room for manoeuvre that you think we have.
Hardly. Truss planned to cut taxes for her mates. Who would pocket the savings. Which slows economic output further as yet more cash gets removed from circulation,
I am proposing capitalism. We need to spend a shit ton of money on infrastructure. All of which delivers a positive return on investment and positive economic growth. So borrow, invest, receive the return on investment. Capitalism. Or we can say "who pays for that" or "we can't afford it". And watch as our country continues to fall behind our competitors all of whom have borrowed and invested in stuff already.
Investing in things is good, but you can only invest in things up to the available money you have to invest.
Investment, in new labour terms, was generally just throwing money at a problem.
As someone here, possibly Gallowgate as he’s a property lawyer, was saying, the legacy of PFI is going to bite us in a few years time.
I'm not a property lawyer!
I have done a bit with PFI so far, hopefully will do some more over the next few years.
The whole point of PFI generally was that a hospital/school/whatever was handed over to the public sector at the end of the contractual period in a "good as new" condition. The problem is that many PFI companies have not adequately maintained their facilities, have paid out all the profits in dividends, often overseas, and as such a "good as new" facility is not going to be handed over, there's no assets or cash in the companies to sue for breach of contract, so as such we're going to have replace all these facilities at full rebuild cost.
I find PFI very interesting as a concept. My current opinion is that it is not fundamentally flawed, but have been mismanaged and has loopholes you can drive a bus through.
There needed to be a sinking fund, maintained with adequate funds to meet this obligation. Failure to maintain it - even if it meant little or no dividends to shareholders - should have meant immediate transfer back tot he public sector.
There are similar sinking funds required in the UK oil and gas sector, to ensure that abandonment obligations will be met at the end of field life.
There were also the disastrous, New Labour inspired, PPPs which failed to deliver. I was working for Tube Lines at the time Metronet failed badly. The taxpayer ended up on the hook, the private companies just walked away.
When a very important freeway collapsed in LA, years back, Schwarzenegger was Governor of California.
He directed that the companies that rebuilt the freeway in record time had to include in their costs purchasing insurance to create, in effect, a warranty lasting for a couple of decades, that was not dependent on the firms in question existing or having any funds… IIRC
This seems to me a sensible and interesting idea. Thoughts?
In an article for Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Marco Seliger writes that part of Germany’s reluctance to allow other countries send their Leopards to Ukraine can be explained by the interest of the German weapon industry
Germany would also lose influence over neighbors’ security policy….
“Any country that would supply Leopard 2s to Ukraine is being offered U.S. tanks from its own inventory & a long-term industrial partnership as a substitute according to German industrial circles.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
Anyone else remember this one - Channel 4 undercover investigation. Target House of Lords.
Sent in a couple of reporters, pretending to be businessmen buying policy (with extra steps)
Only one peer gave the answer they deserved. Something like - “What you are proposing is immoral. It is either illegal or should be. Go and don’t darken my door again”.
Mr. Pioneers, entirely possible the PCP is almost ungovernable. Couple that with a less than happy situation economically and even a strong leader would find it a challenge.
It'll be interesting to see what Labour do when they inherit a bad situation. I suspect they'll try whacking the rich, drive many of them off, then bring in taxes on the middle class (or they might just glut on borrowing) for spending, some of which is much needed (judiciary).
My Labour years are receding into my past so I can't speak for them. But surely the thing that is missing is some basic maths. We have millions of people who are economically inactive because they can't afford to work, or don't see the point as it doesn't pay. Millions more whose reward for working long hours in demanding jobs is to have just enough money to be flat broke.
Our economic system is broken because of these groups. They do not have enough cash to consume. Which impacts productivity for those who do work, and tip more into inactivity or jobs that have no hope of ever giving them cash to consume with. At the same time we tip ever vaster amounts in to be syphoned out by the spiv class who need it to pay more donations to the Conservative Party.
So government must borrow. Invest. Receive a return on the investment. We have a list of things this country needs just to get back to a level playing field with neighbouring big economies. Announce a bazooka of investment into schools and teaching, into clean power generation & manufacturing, into road and rail and fibre broadband, into matched investment with the private sector in sectors we need like automotive and aerospace and pharmaceuticals and energy. Companies can keep their low taxes only if they invest in kit and people.
And find a way to get people spending. Not handing money over to spiv multinationals dodging taxes and profiteering from the energy crisis. Local business. Print money by issuing everyone with a debit card where the money can only be spent in local businesses...
To be honest this makes Truss's plans for growth look conservative. We simply do not have the room for manoeuvre that you think we have.
Hardly. Truss planned to cut taxes for her mates. Who would pocket the savings. Which slows economic output further as yet more cash gets removed from circulation,
I am proposing capitalism. We need to spend a shit ton of money on infrastructure. All of which delivers a positive return on investment and positive economic growth. So borrow, invest, receive the return on investment. Capitalism. Or we can say "who pays for that" or "we can't afford it". And watch as our country continues to fall behind our competitors all of whom have borrowed and invested in stuff already.
Investing in things is good, but you can only invest in things up to the available money you have to invest.
Investment, in new labour terms, was generally just throwing money at a problem.
As someone here, possibly Gallowgate as he’s a property lawyer, was saying, the legacy of PFI is going to bite us in a few years time.
I'm not a property lawyer!
I have done a bit with PFI so far, hopefully will do some more over the next few years.
The whole point of PFI generally was that a hospital/school/whatever was handed over to the public sector at the end of the contractual period in a "good as new" condition. The problem is that many PFI companies have not adequately maintained their facilities, have paid out all the profits in dividends, often overseas, and as such a "good as new" facility is not going to be handed over, there's no assets or cash in the companies to sue for breach of contract, so as such we're going to have replace all these facilities at full rebuild cost.
I find PFI very interesting as a concept. My current opinion is that it is not fundamentally flawed, but have been mismanaged and has loopholes you can drive a bus through.
There needed to be a sinking fund, maintained with adequate funds to meet this obligation. Failure to maintain it - even if it meant little or no dividends to shareholders - should have meant immediate transfer back tot he public sector.
There are similar sinking funds required in the UK oil and gas sector, to ensure that abandonment obligations will be met at the end of field life.
There were also the disastrous, New Labour inspired, PPPs which failed to deliver. I was working for Tube Lines at the time Metronet failed badly. The taxpayer ended up on the hook, the private companies just walked away.
When a very important freeway collapsed in LA, years back, Schwarzenegger was Governor of California.
He directed that the companies that rebuilt the freeway in record time had to include in their costs purchasing insurance to create, in effect, a warranty lasting for a couple of decades, that was not dependent on the firms in question existing or having any funds… IIRC
This seems to me a sensible and interesting idea. Thoughts?
Haven't got time to post my thoughts at the moment, but I'll be back.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable.
To be fair I don’t think we’ve quite yet reached the nadir of the 92-97 government - that’s certainly not to say they won’t - plenty of nutters around to take us their - but my memory is of a government that couldn’t govern - rebellions and a diminishing majority leading to repeated upsets. We’ll see. Things could get worse. Or not.
Some fine displacement activity from Jezza, distracting from the bin fire of his own career. They’ll be making it illegal for old blokes to turn up the collars of their vastly unsuitable leather jackets next.
I thought Leon came up with with this kind of crap on his own. I'm disappointed to find out that he might just be copying it from Jeremy "Aga Supper" Clarkson.
You would have thought Clarkson might have thought it prudent to talk about cars for a bit. There’s definitely a trend of celebs going a bit funny when they come a cropper on the internet. Rather than shutting up for a bit, they seems to double down desperate to prove to an uninterested universe that they were right all along. The trouble is the trolls respond and before you know it the celeb is living in a bed sit , appearing on gb news launching their own political party.
I have a little bit of sympathy for Clarkson. He's getting old and I guess he increasingly finds the world governed by rules and values that are unfamiliar to him. He needs to listen to The Times They Are A Changin' and follow Bob's advice.
Clarkson is an excellent motoring journalist. He should go back to his roots and ditch the celeb/pundit nonsense and talk about cars. Occasionally do a Grand Tour special like Morecombe and Wise for the noughties nostalgia market.
He could have a happy life.
I’m quite sure he does have a happy life.
Owns three Range Rovers so unlikely.
Well, if you want to have one serviceable Range Rover on any given day, then owning three of them is a good way to go about it!
In an article for Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Marco Seliger writes that part of Germany’s reluctance to allow other countries send their Leopards to Ukraine can be explained by the interest of the German weapon industry
Germany would also lose influence over neighbors’ security policy….
“Any country that would supply Leopard 2s to Ukraine is being offered U.S. tanks from its own inventory & a long-term industrial partnership as a substitute according to German industrial circles.
That is quite possible - the US has a lot of M1s in storage, regularly being cycled through updates to keep the pork flowing to the factory in an important (politically) district.
If Leopards go to Ukraine and are replaced with M1s, then over time, losses in Ukraine will be replaced with more Leopards. The likely result would indeed be that current Leopard 2 operators would end up with M1 fleets.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
This is frustratingly obvious, yet even the "Labour" party do not seem to understand it.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Mr. Pioneers, entirely possible the PCP is almost ungovernable. Couple that with a less than happy situation economically and even a strong leader would find it a challenge.
It'll be interesting to see what Labour do when they inherit a bad situation. I suspect they'll try whacking the rich, drive many of them off, then bring in taxes on the middle class (or they might just glut on borrowing) for spending, some of which is much needed (judiciary).
My Labour years are receding into my past so I can't speak for them. But surely the thing that is missing is some basic maths. We have millions of people who are economically inactive because they can't afford to work, or don't see the point as it doesn't pay. Millions more whose reward for working long hours in demanding jobs is to have just enough money to be flat broke.
Our economic system is broken because of these groups. They do not have enough cash to consume. Which impacts productivity for those who do work, and tip more into inactivity or jobs that have no hope of ever giving them cash to consume with. At the same time we tip ever vaster amounts in to be syphoned out by the spiv class who need it to pay more donations to the Conservative Party.
So government must borrow. Invest. Receive a return on the investment. We have a list of things this country needs just to get back to a level playing field with neighbouring big economies. Announce a bazooka of investment into schools and teaching, into clean power generation & manufacturing, into road and rail and fibre broadband, into matched investment with the private sector in sectors we need like automotive and aerospace and pharmaceuticals and energy. Companies can keep their low taxes only if they invest in kit and people.
And find a way to get people spending. Not handing money over to spiv multinationals dodging taxes and profiteering from the energy crisis. Local business. Print money by issuing everyone with a debit card where the money can only be spent in local businesses...
To be honest this makes Truss's plans for growth look conservative. We simply do not have the room for manoeuvre that you think we have.
Hardly. Truss planned to cut taxes for her mates. Who would pocket the savings. Which slows economic output further as yet more cash gets removed from circulation,
I am proposing capitalism. We need to spend a shit ton of money on infrastructure. All of which delivers a positive return on investment and positive economic growth. So borrow, invest, receive the return on investment. Capitalism. Or we can say "who pays for that" or "we can't afford it". And watch as our country continues to fall behind our competitors all of whom have borrowed and invested in stuff already.
Investing in things is good, but you can only invest in things up to the available money you have to invest.
Investment, in new labour terms, was generally just throwing money at a problem.
As someone here, possibly Gallowgate as he’s a property lawyer, was saying, the legacy of PFI is going to bite us in a few years time.
I'm not a property lawyer!
I have done a bit with PFI so far, hopefully will do some more over the next few years.
The whole point of PFI generally was that a hospital/school/whatever was handed over to the public sector at the end of the contractual period in a "good as new" condition. The problem is that many PFI companies have not adequately maintained their facilities, have paid out all the profits in dividends, often overseas, and as such a "good as new" facility is not going to be handed over, there's no assets or cash in the companies to sue for breach of contract, so as such we're going to have replace all these facilities at full rebuild cost.
I find PFI very interesting as a concept. My current opinion is that it is not fundamentally flawed, but have been mismanaged and has loopholes you can drive a bus through.
There needed to be a sinking fund, maintained with adequate funds to meet this obligation. Failure to maintain it - even if it meant little or no dividends to shareholders - should have meant immediate transfer back tot he public sector.
There are similar sinking funds required in the UK oil and gas sector, to ensure that abandonment obligations will be met at the end of field life.
There were also the disastrous, New Labour inspired, PPPs which failed to deliver. I was working for Tube Lines at the time Metronet failed badly. The taxpayer ended up on the hook, the private companies just walked away.
When a very important freeway collapsed in LA, years back, Schwarzenegger was Governor of California.
He directed that the companies that rebuilt the freeway in record time had to include in their costs purchasing insurance to create, in effect, a warranty lasting for a couple of decades, that was not dependent on the firms in question existing or having any funds… IIRC
This seems to me a sensible and interesting idea. Thoughts?
Sounds a bit like a bastadardisation of DBFO, Design-Build-Insure . It'd be another tool in the armoury for such projects, but would increase construction costs, perhaps significantly.
Reminds me slightly of the Misguided busway here in Cambridgeshire. Twelve years on and it's apparently in a fairly poor state, and a large stretch south of Cambridge railway station has been singled. The contractors were sued for £33 million nearly ten years ago, and the council have spent £10 million in litigation alone. Something like DBFO or DBI *might* have saved everyone a lot of money.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Tough. They've been on easy street taking the piss for decades.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
I don't doubt that, but it is right to do so. The alternative is an increasingly divided society of gilded financial aristocracy and increasingly mutinous peasantry. Sooner or later the tumbrils roll.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
And yet we see skilled occupations (like nurses and physios) getting real terms pay cuts, and those in the private sector too. Johnson was right about the need to move to a high wage economy, but the current regime don't want to pay, but do still cheat the taxpayer of even a tiny part of their vast fortunes.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Mr. Pioneers, entirely possible the PCP is almost ungovernable. Couple that with a less than happy situation economically and even a strong leader would find it a challenge.
It'll be interesting to see what Labour do when they inherit a bad situation. I suspect they'll try whacking the rich, drive many of them off, then bring in taxes on the middle class (or they might just glut on borrowing) for spending, some of which is much needed (judiciary).
My Labour years are receding into my past so I can't speak for them. But surely the thing that is missing is some basic maths. We have millions of people who are economically inactive because they can't afford to work, or don't see the point as it doesn't pay. Millions more whose reward for working long hours in demanding jobs is to have just enough money to be flat broke.
Our economic system is broken because of these groups. They do not have enough cash to consume. Which impacts productivity for those who do work, and tip more into inactivity or jobs that have no hope of ever giving them cash to consume with. At the same time we tip ever vaster amounts in to be syphoned out by the spiv class who need it to pay more donations to the Conservative Party.
So government must borrow. Invest. Receive a return on the investment. We have a list of things this country needs just to get back to a level playing field with neighbouring big economies. Announce a bazooka of investment into schools and teaching, into clean power generation & manufacturing, into road and rail and fibre broadband, into matched investment with the private sector in sectors we need like automotive and aerospace and pharmaceuticals and energy. Companies can keep their low taxes only if they invest in kit and people.
And find a way to get people spending. Not handing money over to spiv multinationals dodging taxes and profiteering from the energy crisis. Local business. Print money by issuing everyone with a debit card where the money can only be spent in local businesses...
To be honest this makes Truss's plans for growth look conservative. We simply do not have the room for manoeuvre that you think we have.
Hardly. Truss planned to cut taxes for her mates. Who would pocket the savings. Which slows economic output further as yet more cash gets removed from circulation,
I am proposing capitalism. We need to spend a shit ton of money on infrastructure. All of which delivers a positive return on investment and positive economic growth. So borrow, invest, receive the return on investment. Capitalism. Or we can say "who pays for that" or "we can't afford it". And watch as our country continues to fall behind our competitors all of whom have borrowed and invested in stuff already.
But infrastructure going where? Look at the Humber bridge (is it the Humber bridge?) linking Hull and Grimsby, that has not led to economic regeneration of those areas. Shouldn't the economy grow first, both leading to the necessity of new infrastructure, and at least partially providing the funds for it too?
Maybe they would have been even more of a dump without the Humber bridge?
Possibly so, but the root cause of the rot in our towns and cities has afaics been the loss of the industries that made them wealthy, and the lack of replacement industries of a similar magnitude. Bootmaking in Northamption, fishing in Grimsby, lacemaking in Nottingham etc. etc. We can connect them up better and improve the built environment, fund leisure facilities and museums, but those things are not engines of prosperity themselves.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Tough. They've been on easy street taking the piss for decades.
Not all of them, to be fair. Those who have bought relatively recently would be utterly screwed by the sort of correction we need to make a difference.
But can anyone seriously look at the mismatch between wages and house prices that began in the late 80's and really took off in the late 90's and think "yes, that has made Britain a better country to live in"? Just imagine if that money had been used for something, anything other than windfalls for existing homeowners.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Tough. They've been on easy street taking the piss for decades.
Well obviously that is not happening with a Conservative government as home owners in the home counties and their heirs are the Tory core vote.
It might happen under Labour with Starmer imposing a wealth tax on the highest value properties but that will also not go down well with Labour voters with expensive houses in Hampstead, Westminster, Wandsworth, Islington etc
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
I don't doubt that, but it is right to do so. The alternative is an increasingly divided society of gilded financial aristocracy and increasingly mutinous peasantry. Sooner or later the tumbrils roll.
That may be happening anyway with AI and the divide between the City of London and Canary Wharf and the rest.
At least property ownership spreads wealth more than the income divide between the capitalist elite and the rest
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
I can see the logic of Barclay. He rhymes with Hague and EdM. Sensible midranking Cabinet minister, but not capable of making the necessary noise to be LotO. Not PM in waiting material.
But he probably puts the return to plausibility off for a parliament. The Conservatives might as well get Badenoch out of their system. Adapting the 1964 Goldwater slogans,
In your heart, you know she's right but In your guts, you know she's nuts.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
Casino goes for a safe seat in GE2024. Casino wins. Casino becomes LOTO.
Casino then wins GE2029 and then insists France honours the Treaty of Troyes.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Just reality.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
I can see the logic of Barclay. He rhymes with Hague and EdM. Sensible midranking Cabinet minister, but not capable of making the necessary noise to be LotO. Not PM in waiting material.
But he probably puts the return to plausibility off for a parliament. The Conservatives might as well get Badenoch out of their system. Adapting the 1964 Goldwater slogans,
In your heart, you know she's right but In your guts, you know she's nuts.
It won't be Badenoch either.
If the party want their own Corbyn it would be Jacob Rees Mogg not her.
However that would likely not be unless and until after a second election defeat
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Just reality.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
There's no guarantee that Labour wont just blame all their problems on the Tories, as the Tories have done since 2010.
There's also no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future.
Mr. Pioneers, entirely possible the PCP is almost ungovernable. Couple that with a less than happy situation economically and even a strong leader would find it a challenge.
It'll be interesting to see what Labour do when they inherit a bad situation. I suspect they'll try whacking the rich, drive many of them off, then bring in taxes on the middle class (or they might just glut on borrowing) for spending, some of which is much needed (judiciary).
My Labour years are receding into my past so I can't speak for them. But surely the thing that is missing is some basic maths. We have millions of people who are economically inactive because they can't afford to work, or don't see the point as it doesn't pay. Millions more whose reward for working long hours in demanding jobs is to have just enough money to be flat broke.
Our economic system is broken because of these groups. They do not have enough cash to consume. Which impacts productivity for those who do work, and tip more into inactivity or jobs that have no hope of ever giving them cash to consume with. At the same time we tip ever vaster amounts in to be syphoned out by the spiv class who need it to pay more donations to the Conservative Party.
So government must borrow. Invest. Receive a return on the investment. We have a list of things this country needs just to get back to a level playing field with neighbouring big economies. Announce a bazooka of investment into schools and teaching, into clean power generation & manufacturing, into road and rail and fibre broadband, into matched investment with the private sector in sectors we need like automotive and aerospace and pharmaceuticals and energy. Companies can keep their low taxes only if they invest in kit and people.
And find a way to get people spending. Not handing money over to spiv multinationals dodging taxes and profiteering from the energy crisis. Local business. Print money by issuing everyone with a debit card where the money can only be spent in local businesses...
To be honest this makes Truss's plans for growth look conservative. We simply do not have the room for manoeuvre that you think we have.
Hardly. Truss planned to cut taxes for her mates. Who would pocket the savings. Which slows economic output further as yet more cash gets removed from circulation,
I am proposing capitalism. We need to spend a shit ton of money on infrastructure. All of which delivers a positive return on investment and positive economic growth. So borrow, invest, receive the return on investment. Capitalism. Or we can say "who pays for that" or "we can't afford it". And watch as our country continues to fall behind our competitors all of whom have borrowed and invested in stuff already.
But infrastructure going where? Look at the Humber bridge (is it the Humber bridge?) linking Hull and Grimsby, that has not led to economic regeneration of those areas. Shouldn't the economy grow first, both leading to the necessity of new infrastructure, and at least partially providing the funds for it too?
Maybe they would have been even more of a dump without the Humber bridge?
Possibly so, but the root cause of the rot in our towns and cities has afaics been the loss of the industries that made them wealthy, and the lack of replacement industries of a similar magnitude. Bootmaking in Northamption, fishing in Grimsby, lacemaking in Nottingham etc. etc. We can connect them up better and improve the built environment, fund leisure facilities and museums, but those things are not engines of prosperity themselves.
As I always like to attempt to over some solutions if possible, I see it thusly: we should accept that working practises are changing, and working from home/decentralised working is with us to stay, and that it will change London, and offer opportunities for the regions. London should become a place where you have business headquarters as a status symbol, and a tourist and party city. That will keep London wealthy.
We should also carefully reindustrialise wherever possible along lines that have worked before. Fishing is obviously low hanging fruit, but other industries too. It is disgraceful that Government shipbuilding contracts post-Brexit have gone to Spain. Which industries succeed and which don't then informs infrastructure spending and ensures large sums of money are not just being chucked around more in hope than anticipation.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
To be fair, it's what every decaying government thinks. It's a necessary bit of delusion, because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. After all, the alternative is that, if they lose in 2024, that's probably it for the blue team until 2033, if not 2037, and the next Conservative PM is somewhere in the list of wannabe Conservative parliamentary candidates. Not Barclay, not Badenoch, but someone nobody has heard of yet.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
We are living massively beyond our means and we have been for a very long time, completely depleting our capital as a nation. The answer is not to spend a whole heap more that we have not earned.
If economic activity rates were the answer we would be doing very well, we have one of the highest. But its not. Productivity is the answer and always have been. For that we need to incentivise others to invest (because we have no money of our own), encourage training, improve education and skills, make cheap labour a less attractive option and improve our management. Difficult yes, but paying people more when they have not improved their output is purely inflationary and any short term gain is illusionary.
You improve productivity with better infrastructure, better public services, more housing and fewer barriers to people moving around. That requires investment and that requires borrowing. Markets are not stupid. They get that. We are not going to grow our way out of this hole without significant government spending.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
To be fair, it's what every decaying government thinks. It's a necessary bit of delusion, because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. After all, the alternative is that, if they lose in 2024, that's probably it for the blue team until 2033, if not 2037, and the next Conservative PM is somewhere in the list of wannabe Conservative parliamentary candidates. Not Barclay, not Badenoch, but someone nobody has heard of yet.
That's why it's better to try to win now. But to do that Sunak Hunt have got to go. They have nothing to lose by rolling the dice - they're staring down electoral wipeout.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
I don't think Badenoch would come close if there was a new leader before the next GE, unless the Tories are crazy enough to put her into the last 2 to a membership vote against someone useless. She is too inexperienced, has done little of note in her new portfolio and does have more than a whiff of Truss-like madness about her.
Barclay is a reasonable tip by @HYUFD and while I think that a further defenestration of a sitting PM is unlikely, it is possible. It would have to be a coronation and Barclay would be one of the few possibilities that isn't too divisive amongst MPs.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
I don't think Badenoch would come close if there was a new leader before the next GE, unless the Tories are crazy enough to put her into the last 2 to a membership vote against someone useless. She is too inexperienced, has done little of note in her new portfolio and does have more than a whiff of Truss-like madness about her.
Barclay is a reasonable tip by @HYUFD and while I think that a further defenestration of a sitting PM is unlikely, it is possible. It would have to be a coronation and Barclay would be one of the few possibilities that isn't too divisive amongst MPs.
What would be the point of replacing one boring non-entity with another boring non-entity?
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
I don't think Badenoch would come close if there was a new leader before the next GE, unless the Tories are crazy enough to put her into the last 2 to a membership vote against someone useless. She is too inexperienced, has done little of note in her new portfolio and does have more than a whiff of Truss-like madness about her.
Barclay is a reasonable tip by @HYUFD and while I think that a further defenestration of a sitting PM is unlikely, it is possible. It would have to be a coronation and Barclay would be one of the few possibilities that isn't too divisive amongst MPs.
What would be the point of replacing one boring non-entity with another boring non-entity?
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
We are living massively beyond our means and we have been for a very long time, completely depleting our capital as a nation. The answer is not to spend a whole heap more that we have not earned.
If economic activity rates were the answer we would be doing very well, we have one of the highest. But its not. Productivity is the answer and always have been. For that we need to incentivise others to invest (because we have no money of our own), encourage training, improve education and skills, make cheap labour a less attractive option and improve our management. Difficult yes, but paying people more when they have not improved their output is purely inflationary and any short term gain is illusionary.
You improve productivity with better infrastructure, better public services, more housing and fewer barriers to people moving around. That requires investment and that requires borrowing. Markets are not stupid. They get that. We are not going to grow our way out of this hole without significant government spending.
That's one side of the ledger: the other is a stable economic and political environment with a competitive tax regime that rewards risk taking and innovation, both for workers and businesses.
Hope the somewhat dreary weather in this part of the world* is not putting you off your enjoyment of a dram of extra strong turnip juice.
*To explain that, I’m staying with family in Gatehouse of Fleet this weekend. Having a lovely time and just been for a walk in the woods, now admiring the view across Loch Ken which may be restricted but has a certain grandeur.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No. You are not viewing todays Tory Party properly. The only response to this suspicious non entity ramping is, has Barclay helped HY get an Amigo Loan recently 🤣
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
I don't think Badenoch would come close if there was a new leader before the next GE, unless the Tories are crazy enough to put her into the last 2 to a membership vote against someone useless. She is too inexperienced, has done little of note in her new portfolio and does have more than a whiff of Truss-like madness about her.
Barclay is a reasonable tip by @HYUFD and while I think that a further defenestration of a sitting PM is unlikely, it is possible. It would have to be a coronation and Barclay would be one of the few possibilities that isn't too divisive amongst MPs.
I was thinking more Leader of the Opposition, I expect Sunak will remain PM until the next general election
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Just reality.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
There's no guarantee that Labour wont just blame all their problems on the Tories, as the Tories have done since 2010.
There's also no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future.
Even Ed Miliband got a poll lead over Cameron's Tories within 6 months of Labour losing power in 2010 with just 29% voteshare
Boris Johnson has apparently travelled from Davos to Kiev this morning.
No matter what else we might think of him, can we all acknowledge that his leadership on Ukraine was outstanding.
Been in Bakhmut apparently.
I don't understand that comment. Genuinely. Are you opposed to our helping Ukraine? Is it because you expect the Ukrainians to keep rolling over the Russians without setbacks and are somehow blaming the UK and Johnson in particular for a Russian advance?
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Just reality.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
There's no guarantee that Labour wont just blame all their problems on the Tories, as the Tories have done since 2010.
There's also no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future.
Even Ed Miliband got a poll lead over Cameron's Tories within 6 months of Labour losing power in 2010 with just 29% voteshare
Yes, but there's no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future. Especially after the absolute mess of the country you guys have presided over.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
Added: And as for employers paying trained staff - you know, what about nurses? Doctors? Therapists? Administrators in hospitals (the ones who do the actual paperwork and data flow)? Train drivers? Teachers? Teacher's assistants? There's a certain employer or body controlling the employers that doesn't seem to want to play ball like you say. It's called the Tory Government.
Thread: Pay has been stagnant since the financial crisis, with especially poor growth in the public sector
But plot the real-term wage growth of striking workers on a chart, and it's clear teachers and nurses have had a particularly rough ride...
Ask the public who is right to strike, and their view is clear: NHS workers and teachers have the biggest support. People are more sceptical when it comes to higher-paid roles.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
It also depends on the level.
A wealth tax on properties over £1 million Labour could get away with, over £500k and they even start to hit detached homes in the Midlands, the North and Scotland and properties in Edinburgh crescents, not just lots of properties in London and the South
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
I don't think Badenoch would come close if there was a new leader before the next GE, unless the Tories are crazy enough to put her into the last 2 to a membership vote against someone useless. She is too inexperienced, has done little of note in her new portfolio and does have more than a whiff of Truss-like madness about her.
Barclay is a reasonable tip by @HYUFD and while I think that a further defenestration of a sitting PM is unlikely, it is possible. It would have to be a coronation and Barclay would be one of the few possibilities that isn't too divisive amongst MPs.
I think Sunak is as safe in the leadership as he has ever looked.
Recent events hurt the Conservatives generally, but also make a Johnson comeback less plausible as he's the major source of the corruption and decay.
Someone like Barclay is completely pointless as he's incredibly bland and there is no reason to think for one second he'd be more appealing than Sunak.
Someone young with ambition, like Badenoch, would firstly be a huge risk (could easily be another Truss). But in any event why would they want it at this point? The ship is going down, and someone if you've a good chance of taking on the leadership in opposition in 2024, that is surely now the better option.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Yet all he is suggesting is what has happened in this Parliament in reverse. The Tories have failed to get a grip on things and there has been a swing to labour. No reason why this should not happen in reverse.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Just reality.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
There's no guarantee that Labour wont just blame all their problems on the Tories, as the Tories have done since 2010.
There's also no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future.
Even Ed Miliband got a poll lead over Cameron's Tories within 6 months of Labour losing power in 2010 with just 29% voteshare
Yes, but there's no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future. Especially after the absolute mess of the country you guys have presided over.
If the economy does not recover, taxes go up and inflation stays high as the main opposition of course they will
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
We are living massively beyond our means and we have been for a very long time, completely depleting our capital as a nation. The answer is not to spend a whole heap more that we have not earned.
If economic activity rates were the answer we would be doing very well, we have one of the highest. But its not. Productivity is the answer and always have been. For that we need to incentivise others to invest (because we have no money of our own), encourage training, improve education and skills, make cheap labour a less attractive option and improve our management. Difficult yes, but paying people more when they have not improved their output is purely inflationary and any short term gain is illusionary.
You improve productivity with better infrastructure, better public services, more housing and fewer barriers to people moving around. That requires investment and that requires borrowing. Markets are not stupid. They get that. We are not going to grow our way out of this hole without significant government spending.
That's one side of the ledger: the other is a stable economic and political environment with a competitive tax regime that rewards risk taking and innovation, both for workers and businesses.
I'd modify that slightly to:
".. rewards risk-taking and innovation more than rent-seeking.."
The relative rewards of risk-taking and innovation are too low compared to rent-seeking. You can right that balance with a mix of encouragements and removing discouragements from risk-taking, while introducing some taxation and regulatory discouragements to rent-seeking.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Just reality.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
There's no guarantee that Labour wont just blame all their problems on the Tories, as the Tories have done since 2010.
There's also no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future.
Even Ed Miliband got a poll lead over Cameron's Tories within 6 months of Labour losing power in 2010 with just 29% voteshare
Yes, but there's no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future. Especially after the absolute mess of the country you guys have presided over.
If the economy does not recover, taxes go up and inflation stays high as the main opposition of course they will
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Yet all he is suggesting is what has happened in this Parliament in reverse. The Tories have failed to get a grip on things and there has been a swing to labour. No reason why this should not happen in reverse.
It might happen. It might not. Nothing is guaranteed. Look at Canada, France.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
Perhaps I do, thanks, on reflection. But the point remains: what's the point of training if you still end up on the same minimum wage?
in my defence I can plead that I have indeed remarked on PB before on how Tory policy seems to have been to run a modern Speenhamland System of subsidising the private sector (cf C19 landowners) by taxing the middle classes more generally while pampering their party members (cf C19 landowners again).
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Thread: Pay has been stagnant since the financial crisis, with especially poor growth in the public sector
But plot the real-term wage growth of striking workers on a chart, and it's clear teachers and nurses have had a particularly rough ride...
Ask the public who is right to strike, and their view is clear: NHS workers and teachers have the biggest support. People are more sceptical when it comes to higher-paid roles.
It's still pretty much just a list of whether people think positively of certain professions. Still of value, but it doesn't feel like much of a judgement on the specifics of striking now.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
We are living massively beyond our means and we have been for a very long time, completely depleting our capital as a nation. The answer is not to spend a whole heap more that we have not earned.
If economic activity rates were the answer we would be doing very well, we have one of the highest. But its not. Productivity is the answer and always have been. For that we need to incentivise others to invest (because we have no money of our own), encourage training, improve education and skills, make cheap labour a less attractive option and improve our management. Difficult yes, but paying people more when they have not improved their output is purely inflationary and any short term gain is illusionary.
You improve productivity with better infrastructure, better public services, more housing and fewer barriers to people moving around. That requires investment and that requires borrowing. Markets are not stupid. They get that. We are not going to grow our way out of this hole without significant government spending.
That's one side of the ledger: the other is a stable economic and political environment with a competitive tax regime that rewards risk taking and innovation, both for workers and businesses.
I'd modify that slightly to:
".. rewards risk-taking and innovation more than rent-seeking.."
The relative rewards of risk-taking and innovation are too low compared to rent-seeking. You can right that balance with a mix of encouragements and removing discouragements from risk-taking, while introducing some taxation and regulatory discouragements to rent-seeking.
When did BTL mortgages become a substantial thing? That so much profit could be made by doing so little ought to have been a big red light.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Just reality.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
There's no guarantee that Labour wont just blame all their problems on the Tories, as the Tories have done since 2010.
There's also no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future.
Even Ed Miliband got a poll lead over Cameron's Tories within 6 months of Labour losing power in 2010 with just 29% voteshare
Yes, but there's no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future. Especially after the absolute mess of the country you guys have presided over.
If the economy does not recover, taxes go up and inflation stays high as the main opposition of course they will
Utter complacency.
No just reality for every government since the War.
Only the 1964 and 1997 governments were exceptions because the economy was largely sound
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
There's actually a very reasonable chance that inflation will fall back significantly by the time Labour get in and, with it, some of the issues regarding strikes.
It isn't certain, and significant damage will have been done to the economy to get there. But I'd not rely too heavily on those being the challenges for Labour.
Tax potentially more so - Hunt has set a course to push the hard choices (whether tax, spend or both) into 2024. I suspect Labour will have a reasonable "turning round the supertanker" argument that will last them a while, but I do see the risk.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
It also depends on the level.
A wealth tax on properties over £1 million Labour could get away with, over £500k and they even start to hit detached homes in the Midlands, the North and Scotland and properties in Edinburgh crescents, not just lots of properties in London and the South
Anything that involves taxing ‘wealth’ in someone’s primary residence, at anything approaching current value and on a nationwide scale, is going to be more politically toxic than the poll tax.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Just reality.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
There's no guarantee that Labour wont just blame all their problems on the Tories, as the Tories have done since 2010.
There's also no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future.
Even Ed Miliband got a poll lead over Cameron's Tories within 6 months of Labour losing power in 2010 with just 29% voteshare
Yes, but there's no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future. Especially after the absolute mess of the country you guys have presided over.
If the economy does not recover, taxes go up and inflation stays high as the main opposition of course they will
Utter complacency.
No just reality for every government since the War.
Only the 1964 and 1997 governments were exceptions because the economy was largely sound
It's likely, but it isn't guaranteed. It's a level of nuance you find impossible to comprehend.
Boris Johnson has apparently travelled from Davos to Kiev this morning.
No matter what else we might think of him, can we all acknowledge that his leadership on Ukraine was outstanding.
You can understand why the Ukrainians like him so much.
Although I'm reasonably confident 9 out of 10 British PMs would have done similarly well, and the Tallinn declaration/decision to send Challenger 2's seems to show that Sunak is on the same page.
I thought this might be an interesting piece from the economist, instead I came away with was really nobody has any real new ideas....
Devolve more power (then using their own figures, show the areas of the UK with the most devolved powers haven't done any better), cherry pick an example of a rough US city who has done well out of hyper focus on educating around one industry (except they miss the fact that the university driving this has been an elite university with eye watering funding since its inception....bit like saying well lots of companies move to Cambridge (or perhaps Bristol is a better example) because of the poly there.....build massive infrastructure projects to upgrade left behind cities , but then admit even Germany can't actually afford to do this fully, they only did it to select number of big cities, not small towns (isn't that what has happened in Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle etc)
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Employers who complain they can't afford to pay enough such that the taxpayer has to subsidise their employees pay and therefore are also subsidising those businesses have no sympathy from me.
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
We are living massively beyond our means and we have been for a very long time, completely depleting our capital as a nation. The answer is not to spend a whole heap more that we have not earned.
If economic activity rates were the answer we would be doing very well, we have one of the highest. But its not. Productivity is the answer and always have been. For that we need to incentivise others to invest (because we have no money of our own), encourage training, improve education and skills, make cheap labour a less attractive option and improve our management. Difficult yes, but paying people more when they have not improved their output is purely inflationary and any short term gain is illusionary.
You improve productivity with better infrastructure, better public services, more housing and fewer barriers to people moving around. That requires investment and that requires borrowing. Markets are not stupid. They get that. We are not going to grow our way out of this hole without significant government spending.
That's one side of the ledger: the other is a stable economic and political environment with a competitive tax regime that rewards risk taking and innovation, both for workers and businesses.
I'd modify that slightly to:
".. rewards risk-taking and innovation more than rent-seeking.."
The relative rewards of risk-taking and innovation are too low compared to rent-seeking. You can right that balance with a mix of encouragements and removing discouragements from risk-taking, while introducing some taxation and regulatory discouragements to rent-seeking.
When did BTL mortgages become a substantial thing? That so much profit could be made by doing so little ought to have been a big red light.
After the last recession, when investment in property became about the only way to leverage investment, for the average middle-class person without millions in the bank.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Employers who complain they can't afford to pay enough such that the taxpayer has to subsidise their employees pay and therefore are also subsidising those businesses have no sympathy from me.
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
There's also the fact that the very point of capitalism is that inefficient and unviable businesses should go under. Nothing pisses me off more than the "socialise the losses, privatise the profits" approach.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
We are living massively beyond our means and we have been for a very long time, completely depleting our capital as a nation. The answer is not to spend a whole heap more that we have not earned.
If economic activity rates were the answer we would be doing very well, we have one of the highest. But its not. Productivity is the answer and always have been. For that we need to incentivise others to invest (because we have no money of our own), encourage training, improve education and skills, make cheap labour a less attractive option and improve our management. Difficult yes, but paying people more when they have not improved their output is purely inflationary and any short term gain is illusionary.
You improve productivity with better infrastructure, better public services, more housing and fewer barriers to people moving around. That requires investment and that requires borrowing. Markets are not stupid. They get that. We are not going to grow our way out of this hole without significant government spending.
That's one side of the ledger: the other is a stable economic and political environment with a competitive tax regime that rewards risk taking and innovation, both for workers and businesses.
I'd modify that slightly to:
".. rewards risk-taking and innovation more than rent-seeking.."
The relative rewards of risk-taking and innovation are too low compared to rent-seeking. You can right that balance with a mix of encouragements and removing discouragements from risk-taking, while introducing some taxation and regulatory discouragements to rent-seeking.
When did BTL mortgages become a substantial thing? That so much profit could be made by doing so little ought to have been a big red light.
Around about when Blair became PM was the optimal time to start investing in BTL, plus/minus a year or two.
What's striking is that the Blair's seem irked at being late to cash in on the bonanza, having sold their Islington home in 1997, rather than regret for what it did to house-owning opportunities for a generation.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Employers who complain they can't afford to pay enough such that the taxpayer has to subsidise their employees pay and therefore are also subsidising those businesses have no sympathy from me.
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
The problem is every the government going back 20 years have actively encouraged this. Worried about blowback of pushing minimum wage too high and in particular Brown's obsession with the massively flawed "relative poverty" metric, more and more in work benefits have been put in place.
Tax credits in particular are absolutely bonkers, we are going to take your tax, then you fill in a load of forms about your personal living situation, then a load of expensive admin (and fraud) later, we are going to give you some of that back (and you can claim this even when earning £50k a year).
I don't see how we ever break this cycle now, because to do so will mean some big losers (in the short term), and every government shits their pants if the media can ever find a loser out of economic reforms. And throw into the mix, so many businesses whose whole model has been predicted upon this situation, they are going also go mental.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Employers who complain they can't afford to pay enough such that the taxpayer has to subsidise their employees pay and therefore are also subsidising those businesses have no sympathy from me.
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
There's also the fact that the very point of capitalism is that inefficient and unviable businesses should go under. Nothing pisses me off more than the "socialise the losses, privatise the profits" approach.
It also means they can unfairly compete, because of the subsidy, against an employer paying higher wages.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Yet all he is suggesting is what has happened in this Parliament in reverse. The Tories have failed to get a grip on things and there has been a swing to labour. No reason why this should not happen in reverse.
The complacency isn't thinking that might happen, but assuming it will.
Also, the Conservative problem goes rather beyond "failing to get a grip" and into areas which tend to be a symptom of a long period in office - sleaze, division, rudderlessness, sheer fatigue, inability to realistically blame your predecessor etc. So while an incoming Labour Government will doubtless have its own problems, it's complacent to think that the Conservative revival is likely to be quick or to be achieved without significant introspection and change.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Employers who complain they can't afford to pay enough such that the taxpayer has to subsidise their employees pay and therefore are also subsidising those businesses have no sympathy from me.
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
There's also the fact that the very point of capitalism is that inefficient and unviable businesses should go under. Nothing pisses me off more than the "socialise the losses, privatise the profits" approach.
George W Bush made many mistakes but he did let Lehmans go bankrupt with no bailout
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
There's actually a very reasonable chance that inflation will fall back significantly by the time Labour get in and, with it, some of the issues regarding strikes.
It isn't certain, and significant damage will have been done to the economy to get there. But I'd not rely too heavily on those being the challenges for Labour.
Tax potentially more so - Hunt has set a course to push the hard choices (whether tax, spend or both) into 2024. I suspect Labour will have a reasonable "turning round the supertanker" argument that will last them a while, but I do see the risk.
They’d be in their rights to blame the previous government for most things for a fair while. Both Blair’s government and the current mob have never been shy of blaming ills on the previous administration.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
We are living massively beyond our means and we have been for a very long time, completely depleting our capital as a nation. The answer is not to spend a whole heap more that we have not earned.
If economic activity rates were the answer we would be doing very well, we have one of the highest. But its not. Productivity is the answer and always have been. For that we need to incentivise others to invest (because we have no money of our own), encourage training, improve education and skills, make cheap labour a less attractive option and improve our management. Difficult yes, but paying people more when they have not improved their output is purely inflationary and any short term gain is illusionary.
You improve productivity with better infrastructure, better public services, more housing and fewer barriers to people moving around. That requires investment and that requires borrowing. Markets are not stupid. They get that. We are not going to grow our way out of this hole without significant government spending.
That's one side of the ledger: the other is a stable economic and political environment with a competitive tax regime that rewards risk taking and innovation, both for workers and businesses.
I'd modify that slightly to:
".. rewards risk-taking and innovation more than rent-seeking.."
The relative rewards of risk-taking and innovation are too low compared to rent-seeking. You can right that balance with a mix of encouragements and removing discouragements from risk-taking, while introducing some taxation and regulatory discouragements to rent-seeking.
When did BTL mortgages become a substantial thing? That so much profit could be made by doing so little ought to have been a big red light.
Around about when Blair became PM was the optimal time to start investing in BTL, plus/minus a year or two.
What's striking is that the Blair's seem irked at being late to cash in on the bonanza, having sold their Islington home in 1997, rather than regret for what it did to house-owning opportunities for a generation.
Makes sense of the graph in Rob Colvile's column in the Sunday Times today- that's when house prices decisively decoupled from wages.
Think what else we could have done with that investment capital, and weep. Something for nothing tends to be followed by nothing for something.
Boris Johnson has apparently travelled from Davos to Kiev this morning.
No matter what else we might think of him, can we all acknowledge that his leadership on Ukraine was outstanding.
Been in Bakhmut apparently.
I don't understand that comment. Genuinely. Are you opposed to our helping Ukraine? Is it because you expect the Ukrainians to keep rolling over the Russians without setbacks and are somehow blaming the UK and Johnson in particular for a Russian advance?
The comment seems strangely irrelevant.
The comment may be ill judged but we are talking about Johnson.
I know I am a Johnson cynic, but deny that Johnson only does what benefits Johnson. I do not believe he has an altruistic bone in his body.
Sunak is under extreme pressure (in the main from his legacy from Johnson, namely Zahawi and Johnson's guarantee) and Johnson is on manouvres.
Mr. Pioneers, entirely possible the PCP is almost ungovernable. Couple that with a less than happy situation economically and even a strong leader would find it a challenge.
It'll be interesting to see what Labour do when they inherit a bad situation. I suspect they'll try whacking the rich, drive many of them off, then bring in taxes on the middle class (or they might just glut on borrowing) for spending, some of which is much needed (judiciary).
My Labour years are receding into my past so I can't speak for them. But surely the thing that is missing is some basic maths. We have millions of people who are economically inactive because they can't afford to work, or don't see the point as it doesn't pay. Millions more whose reward for working long hours in demanding jobs is to have just enough money to be flat broke.
Our economic system is broken because of these groups. They do not have enough cash to consume. Which impacts productivity for those who do work, and tip more into inactivity or jobs that have no hope of ever giving them cash to consume with. At the same time we tip ever vaster amounts in to be syphoned out by the spiv class who need it to pay more donations to the Conservative Party.
So government must borrow. Invest. Receive a return on the investment. We have a list of things this country needs just to get back to a level playing field with neighbouring big economies. Announce a bazooka of investment into schools and teaching, into clean power generation & manufacturing, into road and rail and fibre broadband, into matched investment with the private sector in sectors we need like automotive and aerospace and pharmaceuticals and energy. Companies can keep their low taxes only if they invest in kit and people.
And find a way to get people spending. Not handing money over to spiv multinationals dodging taxes and profiteering from the energy crisis. Local business. Print money by issuing everyone with a debit card where the money can only be spent in local businesses...
To be honest this makes Truss's plans for growth look conservative. We simply do not have the room for manoeuvre that you think we have.
Hardly. Truss planned to cut taxes for her mates. Who would pocket the savings. Which slows economic output further as yet more cash gets removed from circulation,
I am proposing capitalism. We need to spend a shit ton of money on infrastructure. All of which delivers a positive return on investment and positive economic growth. So borrow, invest, receive the return on investment. Capitalism. Or we can say "who pays for that" or "we can't afford it". And watch as our country continues to fall behind our competitors all of whom have borrowed and invested in stuff already.
Investing in things is good, but you can only invest in things up to the available money you have to invest.
Investment, in new labour terms, was generally just throwing money at a problem.
As someone here, possibly Gallowgate as he’s a property lawyer, was saying, the legacy of PFI is going to bite us in a few years time.
I'm not a property lawyer!
I have done a bit with PFI so far, hopefully will do some more over the next few years.
The whole point of PFI generally was that a hospital/school/whatever was handed over to the public sector at the end of the contractual period in a "good as new" condition. The problem is that many PFI companies have not adequately maintained their facilities, have paid out all the profits in dividends, often overseas, and as such a "good as new" facility is not going to be handed over, there's no assets or cash in the companies to sue for breach of contract, so as such we're going to have replace all these facilities at full rebuild cost.
I find PFI very interesting as a concept. My current opinion is that it is not fundamentally flawed, but have been mismanaged and has loopholes you can drive a bus through.
There needed to be a sinking fund, maintained with adequate funds to meet this obligation. Failure to maintain it - even if it meant little or no dividends to shareholders - should have meant immediate transfer back tot he public sector.
There are similar sinking funds required in the UK oil and gas sector, to ensure that abandonment obligations will be met at the end of field life.
Well yeah, but that doesn't help the problems with the contracts already in existence.
My understanding is that in the 90s/early 2000s, the banks and institutional investors did not want provisions similar to what you suggest.
Well of course they didn't want them. For the very reason that it would have stopped the bleed of funds to investors.
They should have been told to fuck off. The naivete on display by those negotiating for the government was jaw-dropping.
Mr. Pioneers, entirely possible the PCP is almost ungovernable. Couple that with a less than happy situation economically and even a strong leader would find it a challenge.
It'll be interesting to see what Labour do when they inherit a bad situation. I suspect they'll try whacking the rich, drive many of them off, then bring in taxes on the middle class (or they might just glut on borrowing) for spending, some of which is much needed (judiciary).
My Labour years are receding into my past so I can't speak for them. But surely the thing that is missing is some basic maths. We have millions of people who are economically inactive because they can't afford to work, or don't see the point as it doesn't pay. Millions more whose reward for working long hours in demanding jobs is to have just enough money to be flat broke.
Our economic system is broken because of these groups. They do not have enough cash to consume. Which impacts productivity for those who do work, and tip more into inactivity or jobs that have no hope of ever giving them cash to consume with. At the same time we tip ever vaster amounts in to be syphoned out by the spiv class who need it to pay more donations to the Conservative Party.
So government must borrow. Invest. Receive a return on the investment. We have a list of things this country needs just to get back to a level playing field with neighbouring big economies. Announce a bazooka of investment into schools and teaching, into clean power generation & manufacturing, into road and rail and fibre broadband, into matched investment with the private sector in sectors we need like automotive and aerospace and pharmaceuticals and energy. Companies can keep their low taxes only if they invest in kit and people.
And find a way to get people spending. Not handing money over to spiv multinationals dodging taxes and profiteering from the energy crisis. Local business. Print money by issuing everyone with a debit card where the money can only be spent in local businesses...
To be honest this makes Truss's plans for growth look conservative. We simply do not have the room for manoeuvre that you think we have.
Hardly. Truss planned to cut taxes for her mates. Who would pocket the savings. Which slows economic output further as yet more cash gets removed from circulation,
I am proposing capitalism. We need to spend a shit ton of money on infrastructure. All of which delivers a positive return on investment and positive economic growth. So borrow, invest, receive the return on investment. Capitalism. Or we can say "who pays for that" or "we can't afford it". And watch as our country continues to fall behind our competitors all of whom have borrowed and invested in stuff already.
Investing in things is good, but you can only invest in things up to the available money you have to invest.
Investment, in new labour terms, was generally just throwing money at a problem.
As someone here, possibly Gallowgate as he’s a property lawyer, was saying, the legacy of PFI is going to bite us in a few years time.
I'm not a property lawyer!
I have done a bit with PFI so far, hopefully will do some more over the next few years.
The whole point of PFI generally was that a hospital/school/whatever was handed over to the public sector at the end of the contractual period in a "good as new" condition. The problem is that many PFI companies have not adequately maintained their facilities, have paid out all the profits in dividends, often overseas, and as such a "good as new" facility is not going to be handed over, there's no assets or cash in the companies to sue for breach of contract, so as such we're going to have replace all these facilities at full rebuild cost.
I find PFI very interesting as a concept. My current opinion is that it is not fundamentally flawed, but have been mismanaged and has loopholes you can drive a bus through.
There needed to be a sinking fund, maintained with adequate funds to meet this obligation. Failure to maintain it - even if it meant little or no dividends to shareholders - should have meant immediate transfer back tot he public sector.
There are similar sinking funds required in the UK oil and gas sector, to ensure that abandonment obligations will be met at the end of field life.
Well yeah, but that doesn't help the problems with the contracts already in existence.
My understanding is that in the 90s/early 2000s, the banks and institutional investors did not want provisions similar to what you suggest.
Well of course they didn't want them. For the very reason that it would have stopped the bleed of funds to investors.
They should have been told to fuck off. The naivete on display by those negotiating for the government was jaw-dropping.
I agree 100%.
However successive governments never seem to want to tell their mates to fuck off.
Boris Johnson has apparently travelled from Davos to Kiev this morning.
No matter what else we might think of him, can we all acknowledge that his leadership on Ukraine was outstanding.
You can understand why the Ukrainians like him so much.
Although I'm reasonably confident 9 out of 10 British PMs would have done similarly well, and the Tallinn declaration/decision to send Challenger 2's seems to show that Sunak is on the same page.
I’m reasonably confident that it would have been easy for the British PM to have taken a Scholz-like attitude to the whole thing, alongside Sholz and Macron.
It was Johnson’s efforts, as it was with the Covid vaccines, that shocked much of the rest of Europe into acting.
I’m pretty sure the EU would have seen Ukraine as Poland’s, Hungary’s and Romania’s problem.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Yet all he is suggesting is what has happened in this Parliament in reverse. The Tories have failed to get a grip on things and there has been a swing to labour. No reason why this should not happen in reverse.
The complacency isn't thinking that might happen, but assuming it will.
Also, the Conservative problem goes rather beyond "failing to get a grip" and into areas which tend to be a symptom of a long period in office - sleaze, division, rudderlessness, sheer fatigue, inability to realistically blame your predecessor etc. So while an incoming Labour Government will doubtless have its own problems, it's complacent to think that the Conservative revival is likely to be quick or to be achieved without significant introspection and change.
Well, anybody calling for Boris to be reinstated as PM can now clearly STFU.
I can't see Boris standing at the next election. We'd all be in a happier place, Boris included, if he'd just resigned and start his new career next week.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Yet all he is suggesting is what has happened in this Parliament in reverse. The Tories have failed to get a grip on things and there has been a swing to labour. No reason why this should not happen in reverse.
The complacency isn't thinking that might happen, but assuming it will.
Also, the Conservative problem goes rather beyond "failing to get a grip" and into areas which tend to be a symptom of a long period in office - sleaze, division, rudderlessness, sheer fatigue, inability to realistically blame your predecessor etc. So while an incoming Labour Government will doubtless have its own problems, it's complacent to think that the Conservative revival is likely to be quick or to be achieved without significant introspection and change.
He’s not assuming, he said ‘if’ not ‘when’.
He said "if" in relation to Labour's performance, not in relation to a swing-back to the Tories.
Like others have mentioned, I suspect Sunak is a prisoner of a party that is simply ungovernable. You can’t have liberal one nation conservatives reconciled to the rabid ERGers co-existing in perfect harmony
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
I would be amazed if the next Tory leader is not Badenoch. She has considerable talent, but I doubt she will turn fortunes round in the next parliament to any major extent.
They will elect Steve Barclay is my view.
You must be very depressed. Do you want a hug?
No, he is competent and if a Labour government fail to get a grip of inflation and strikes and put taxes up the swing back to the Conservative opposition won't take too long
Your complacency is off the charts
Yet all he is suggesting is what has happened in this Parliament in reverse. The Tories have failed to get a grip on things and there has been a swing to labour. No reason why this should not happen in reverse.
The complacency isn't thinking that might happen, but assuming it will.
Also, the Conservative problem goes rather beyond "failing to get a grip" and into areas which tend to be a symptom of a long period in office - sleaze, division, rudderlessness, sheer fatigue, inability to realistically blame your predecessor etc. So while an incoming Labour Government will doubtless have its own problems, it's complacent to think that the Conservative revival is likely to be quick or to be achieved without significant introspection and change.
If the economy is relatively strong then the opposition need to elect a leader who changes the party image and move back to the centre, hence the Tories picked Cameron in 2005 and Labour Starmer in early 2020 and hence it was only Blair who beat the Tories in 1997.
If the economy is weak however, as long as the leader of the Opposition is not too extreme they can win without too much internal change eg Heath in 1970, Wilson in 1974 and Thatcher in 1979
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Employers who complain they can't afford to pay enough such that the taxpayer has to subsidise their employees pay and therefore are also subsidising those businesses have no sympathy from me.
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
There's also the fact that the very point of capitalism is that inefficient and unviable businesses should go under. Nothing pisses me off more than the "socialise the losses, privatise the profits" approach.
The worst example of that in recent times, the energy companies. Literally total morons straight out of uni, with no experience and no backing, were able to setup as an energy company, but in reality they were nothing more than energy traders, betting they could price the futures of energy better than the market. The advantage of their approach, a) far less of regulation / capital requirements than being a proper energy trader and b) should it all go tits up, the government pick up the mess.
Deals are now close with rail workers and firefighters
Some ministers hope this will unlock talks with other unions and mean domino deals
The expectation is nurses could get around 9%
So just to confirm, the unions have won. Weak and weird Rishi has failed, what exactly was the point in this argument? The man has no political ability whatsoever
The nurses were asking for19%, they are apparently about to settle for less than inflation, that is a real terms cut. In what world is that a loss for the government?
Arguably, to answer my own question, it is a world where 9% is not sufficient to ensure an adequate level of staff retention but Sunak has not lost in any conventional sense.
The govt offer was 4% and the nurses asked for 19%. If we settle at 9% after several months of strikes that is most certainly a loss for government. We could have settled at less than 9% (6-8%) if we were proactive in late summer or autumn or around 9% anytime without strike action.
9% now is not more than 8% in the summer unless it is backdated. What I find frustrating, and not just with the nurses, was that the government pay review body line was never ever going to work when inflation had soared from about 4% to more than 10% by the time the award came to be implemented. That was so obvious that it should have been acknowledged in a grown up way and resolved.
Cutting the real incomes of public servants was, and perhaps still is, the means by which the government funds the Trussterfuck and potential tax cuts ahead of the next election. As stated by Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget.
Those public servants aren't willing to be the ones paying for all this.
But the money is not going to be used for taxes, it is going to be used for wages. The price of gas gives a few billion to play with but it can still only be spent once.
Basic economics. They spend the money on wages. That means that instead of being so broke that they have to use a food bank in their own hospital, they actually have spare cash. Which they spend on stuff. This drives the economy by allowing other people to have jobs. They also then consume.
Its called "capitalism". How has the supposedly intelligent right forgotten how the system they are supposed to be advocating actually works? You want to sell your product / service and thus make a profit, you have to have people who both want your product / service and have the cash to spend on it.
Millions economically inactive, millions more who work yet have zero cash to consume with. That is capitalism which is eating itself. The spivs at the top keep removing cash from the system into their own pockets, but very quickly the cash runs out.
The most successful periods in the post war period, and the most successful countries now are ones where ordinary working people, the SE group BC1C2 making up 60% of the working population get good wages. It creates a prosperous society that generates a growing internal economy.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Which would go down like a lead balloon with property owners and their heirs in London and the Home counties.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Tough shit re Home Coiunties Tory parasites.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
I think you underestimate how many people are being paid minimum wage. Making employers pay living wages rather than expecting the Government to subsidise their payroll seems an eminently sensible way to run a country.
You can do more than one thing at once of course.
Oh I agree. I was just referring specifically to the question of a minimum/living wage. Not least because I was surprised to see Carynx's view of it.
Employers who complain they can't afford to pay enough such that the taxpayer has to subsidise their employees pay and therefore are also subsidising those businesses have no sympathy from me.
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
The government itself is the biggest of those employers
Thread: Pay has been stagnant since the financial crisis, with especially poor growth in the public sector
But plot the real-term wage growth of striking workers on a chart, and it's clear teachers and nurses have had a particularly rough ride...
Ask the public who is right to strike, and their view is clear: NHS workers and teachers have the biggest support. People are more sceptical when it comes to higher-paid roles.
It's still pretty much just a list of whether people think positively of certain professions. Still of value, but it doesn't feel like much of a judgement on the specifics of striking now.
Seems to me that train drivers show unions work and that people get the pay rises they should.
Comments
Congratulations.
Germany would also lose influence over neighbors’ security policy….
“Any country that would supply Leopard 2s to Ukraine is being offered U.S. tanks from its own inventory & a long-term industrial partnership as a substitute according to German industrial circles.
All countries sending Leos to 🇺🇦 will be lost to the German tank industry”
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1617103900909400070
Will be interesting to see how they’ll “re-brand” once they lose big. They’ll ever go the full Corbyn route and elect someone like Steve Baker or they’ll be pragmatic in defeat (I can’t see that happening)
Sent in a couple of reporters, pretending to be businessmen buying policy (with extra steps)
Only one peer gave the answer they deserved. Something like - “What you are proposing is immoral. It is either illegal or should be. Go and don’t darken my door again”.
Think he was UUP or DUP?
If Leopards go to Ukraine and are replaced with M1s, then over time, losses in Ukraine will be replaced with more Leopards. The likely result would indeed be that current Leopard 2 operators would end up with M1 fleets.
We have moved away from that in recent years, as indeed have our international peers, but a fundamental part of true "Levelling Up" is tilting those rewards away from capital back to labour. The way to do that is to shift tax away from income and NI, and towards wealth taxes. Raise property taxes, increase taxes on capital gains and on inheritance to make up the difference.
Raising the minimum wage and improving workers' skills so corporations pay them more is a better way
Reminds me slightly of the Misguided busway here in Cambridgeshire. Twelve years on and it's apparently in a fairly poor state, and a large stretch south of Cambridge railway station has been singled. The contractors were sued for £33 million nearly ten years ago, and the council have spent £10 million in litigation alone. Something like DBFO or DBI *might* have saved everyone a lot of money.
https://www.cambsnews.co.uk/investigation/special-report/high-court-battle-over-cambridgeshire-guided-bus-defects-set-for-summer/6339/
They've been on easy street taking the piss for decades.
But can anyone seriously look at the mismatch between wages and house prices that began in the late 80's and really took off in the late 90's and think "yes, that has made Britain a better country to live in"? Just imagine if that money had been used for something, anything other than windfalls for existing homeowners.
It might happen under Labour with Starmer imposing a wealth tax on the highest value properties but that will also not go down well with Labour voters with expensive houses in Hampstead, Westminster, Wandsworth, Islington etc
At least property ownership spreads wealth more than the income divide between the capitalist elite and the rest
But he probably puts the return to plausibility off for a parliament. The Conservatives might as well get Badenoch out of their system. Adapting the 1964 Goldwater slogans,
In your heart, you know she's right
but
In your guts, you know she's nuts.
Casino then wins GE2029 and then insists France honours the Treaty of Troyes.
If Labour get in they won't face the low inflation, few strikes, relatively balanced budget of 1997.
It will be far more like the 1970s and as we know we changed governments frequently that decade
No matter what else we might think of him, can we all acknowledge that his leadership on Ukraine was outstanding.
If the party want their own Corbyn it would be Jacob Rees Mogg not her.
However that would likely not be unless and until after a second election defeat
There's also no guarantee that the Tories will benefit from any decrease in Labour support in future.
We should also carefully reindustrialise wherever possible along lines that have worked before. Fishing is obviously low hanging fruit, but other industries too. It is disgraceful that Government shipbuilding contracts post-Brexit have gone to Spain. Which industries succeed and which don't then informs infrastructure spending and ensures large sums of money are not just being chucked around more in hope than anticipation.
Barclay is a reasonable tip by @HYUFD and while I think that a further defenestration of a sitting PM is unlikely, it is possible. It would have to be a coronation and Barclay would be one of the few possibilities that isn't too divisive amongst MPs.
Hope the somewhat dreary weather in this part of the world* is not putting you off your enjoyment of a dram of extra strong turnip juice.
*To explain that, I’m staying with family in Gatehouse of Fleet this weekend. Having a lovely time and just been for a walk in the woods, now admiring the view across Loch Ken which may be restricted but has a certain grandeur.
The comment seems strangely irrelevant.
As for raising the minimum wage - doesn't do any good to anyone except the lowest paid in the most miserable jobs.
Added: And as for employers paying trained staff - you know, what about nurses? Doctors? Therapists? Administrators in hospitals (the ones who do the actual paperwork and data flow)? Train drivers? Teachers? Teacher's assistants? There's a certain employer or body controlling the employers that doesn't seem to want to play ball like you say. It's called the Tory Government.
Pay has been stagnant since the financial crisis, with especially poor growth in the public sector
But plot the real-term wage growth of striking workers on a chart, and it's clear teachers and nurses have had a particularly rough ride...
Ask the public who is right to strike, and their view is clear: NHS workers and teachers have the biggest support. People are more sceptical when it comes to higher-paid roles.
More in today's Sunday Times
@thetimes https://thetimes.co.uk/article/voters-back-extra-pay-for-nurses-but-who-else-deserves-a-rise-mwh8kxnwd
A wealth tax on properties over £1 million Labour could get away with, over £500k and they even start to hit detached homes in the Midlands, the North and Scotland and properties in Edinburgh crescents, not just lots of properties in London and the South
Recent events hurt the Conservatives generally, but also make a Johnson comeback less plausible as he's the major source of the corruption and decay.
Someone like Barclay is completely pointless as he's incredibly bland and there is no reason to think for one second he'd be more appealing than Sunak.
Someone young with ambition, like Badenoch, would firstly be a huge risk (could easily be another Truss). But in any event why would they want it at this point? The ship is going down, and someone if you've a good chance of taking on the leadership in opposition in 2024, that is surely now the better option.
".. rewards risk-taking and innovation more than rent-seeking.."
The relative rewards of risk-taking and innovation are too low compared to rent-seeking. You can right that balance with a mix of encouragements and removing discouragements from risk-taking, while introducing some taxation and regulatory discouragements to rent-seeking.
Some food firms may be using inflation as an excuse to hike prices further than necessary, the chairman of Tesco has said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64364744
in my defence I can plead that I have indeed remarked on PB before on how Tory policy seems to have been to run a modern Speenhamland System of subsidising the private sector (cf C19 landowners) by taxing the middle classes more generally while pampering their party members (cf C19 landowners again).
Only the 1964 and 1997 governments were exceptions because the economy was largely sound
It isn't certain, and significant damage will have been done to the economy to get there. But I'd not rely too heavily on those being the challenges for Labour.
Tax potentially more so - Hunt has set a course to push the hard choices (whether tax, spend or both) into 2024. I suspect Labour will have a reasonable "turning round the supertanker" argument that will last them a while, but I do see the risk.
Although I'm reasonably confident 9 out of 10 British PMs would have done similarly well, and the Tallinn declaration/decision to send Challenger 2's seems to show that Sunak is on the same page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y5moVvzayc
I thought this might be an interesting piece from the economist, instead I came away with was really nobody has any real new ideas....
Devolve more power (then using their own figures, show the areas of the UK with the most devolved powers haven't done any better), cherry pick an example of a rough US city who has done well out of hyper focus on educating around one industry (except they miss the fact that the university driving this has been an elite university with eye watering funding since its inception....bit like saying well lots of companies move to Cambridge (or perhaps Bristol is a better example) because of the poly there.....build massive infrastructure projects to upgrade left behind cities , but then admit even Germany can't actually afford to do this fully, they only did it to select number of big cities, not small towns (isn't that what has happened in Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle etc)
I don't mind subsidising health, education, infrastructure and the like, but I draw the line at subsidising employers who can't run a successful business without paying their employees poverty wages and relying on me and other taxpayers to bail them out.
What's striking is that the Blair's seem irked at being late to cash in on the bonanza, having sold their Islington home in 1997, rather than regret for what it did to house-owning opportunities for a generation.
Tax credits in particular are absolutely bonkers, we are going to take your tax, then you fill in a load of forms about your personal living situation, then a load of expensive admin (and fraud) later, we are going to give you some of that back (and you can claim this even when earning £50k a year).
I don't see how we ever break this cycle now, because to do so will mean some big losers (in the short term), and every government shits their pants if the media can ever find a loser out of economic reforms. And throw into the mix, so many businesses whose whole model has been predicted upon this situation, they are going also go mental.
Also, the Conservative problem goes rather beyond "failing to get a grip" and into areas which tend to be a symptom of a long period in office - sleaze, division, rudderlessness, sheer fatigue, inability to realistically blame your predecessor etc. So while an incoming Labour Government will doubtless have its own problems, it's complacent to think that the Conservative revival is likely to be quick or to be achieved without significant introspection and change.
Think what else we could have done with that investment capital, and weep. Something for nothing tends to be followed by nothing for something.
I know I am a Johnson cynic, but deny that Johnson only does what benefits Johnson. I do not believe he has an altruistic bone in his body.
Sunak is under extreme pressure (in the main from his legacy from Johnson, namely Zahawi and Johnson's guarantee) and Johnson is on manouvres.
To balance my post, Johnson will win the next GE.
They should have been told to fuck off. The naivete on display by those negotiating for the government was jaw-dropping.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/mummy-offensive-dehumanising-banned-ancient-egypt-museums-edinburgh/
However successive governments never seem to want to tell their mates to fuck off.
It was Johnson’s efforts, as it was with the Covid vaccines, that shocked much of the rest of Europe into acting.
I’m pretty sure the EU would have seen Ukraine as Poland’s, Hungary’s and Romania’s problem.
I can't see Boris standing at the next election. We'd all be in a happier place, Boris included, if he'd just resigned and start his new career next week.
If the economy is weak however, as long as the leader of the Opposition is not too extreme they can win without too much internal change eg Heath in 1970, Wilson in 1974 and Thatcher in 1979
https://twitter.com/JamWaterhouse/status/1617145319241687041
Presidential office called visit “unofficial”