US states recruit European cleantech groups with green grants https://oltnews.com/us-states-recruit-european-cleantech-groups-with-green-grants Economic officials in several US states have stepped up efforts to lure European clean energy companies across the Atlantic, touting the significant tax advantages offered to foreign developers despite the bitter backlash from European leaders.
Delegations from Michigan, Georgia, Ohio and other states scoured Europe armed with details of the juicy subsidies offered by the Cut Inflation Act, the landmark climate legislation administration of Joe Biden adopted in August.
“I don’t think we’ve actively recruited companies as intensely as we are now,” said Justin Kocher, director of international affairs for JobsOhio. Ohio officials have met with cleantech companies in Germany, Italy and Belgium over the past four months.
The IRA will provide around $370 billion in clean energy grants, marking the most ambitious US effort to tackle climate change, but has sparked heavy criticism in Brussels and allegations that states States discriminate against European companies...
It is not our job to worry about Putin, or where his career might go next, or to engage in pointless Kremlinology. Our job is to help Ukraine win – as fast as possible.
Those heroic people are fighting for all of us. The Ukrainians are fighting for the Georgians, for the Moldovans, for the Baltic states, for the Poles – for anyone who might in due time be threatened by Putin's crazed revanchism and neo-imperialism. They are fighting for the principle that nations should not have their borders changed by force.
When Ukraine wins, that is a message that will be heard around the world. So let us help them win, not next year or the year after, but this year, 2023; and don't talk to me, finally, about expense.
If you want to minimise the world's economic pain, if you want to avoid the enormous cost – in blood and treasure – of letting this tragedy stretch on, then let's together do the obvious thing.
Let's give the Ukrainians all they need to win now.
Didn't Priti Patel get into bother running a freelance foreign policy?
Yes, because she actually did something, while in office.
An MP suggesting policy in a newspaper article has been a thing since newspapers were invented.
It is not our job to worry about Putin, or where his career might go next, or to engage in pointless Kremlinology. Our job is to help Ukraine win – as fast as possible.
Those heroic people are fighting for all of us. The Ukrainians are fighting for the Georgians, for the Moldovans, for the Baltic states, for the Poles – for anyone who might in due time be threatened by Putin's crazed revanchism and neo-imperialism. They are fighting for the principle that nations should not have their borders changed by force.
When Ukraine wins, that is a message that will be heard around the world. So let us help them win, not next year or the year after, but this year, 2023; and don't talk to me, finally, about expense.
If you want to minimise the world's economic pain, if you want to avoid the enormous cost – in blood and treasure – of letting this tragedy stretch on, then let's together do the obvious thing.
Let's give the Ukrainians all they need to win now.
Didn't Priti Patel get into bother running a freelance foreign policy?
Yes, because she actually did something, while in office.
An MP suggesting policy in a newspaper article has been a thing since newspapers were invented.
Boris Johnson is lucky the UK doesn’t have the equivalent of the Logan Act.
“On his journey from Afghanistan to Bournemouth, Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai travelled through at least five different countries, became a convicted drug dealer, and was sentenced to 20 years in a Serbian prison for murdering two of his countrymen with a Kalashnikov.
“The asylum seeker, who on Monday was found guilty of murdering an aspiring Royal Marine, was able to board a ferry in Cherbourg, France and travel to the UK despite his criminal record, and having an asylum claim rejected by the Norwegian authorities a few weeks earlier.
“In December 2019 he claimed asylum in Poole, Dorset after falsely telling a Home Office interviewer he was just 14-years-old when he was in fact at least 18.”
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
As well as not having photo ID to vote, it turns out I've not got any identifying documents that will allow me to check my NIC record via the government gateway.
It doesn't get easier after that. To actually make a payment instead of using your NI and missing year as a payment reference you need to phone and queue for 45 mins to get an 18 digit reference number that does the same thing instead.
Watched the end of that. "who?" "Where?" "Playing in what league?"
Has there ever been a bigger upset than this in Scotland or England cup ties? All the big FA Cup ones I can think of we're Conference sides beating old Division One. This lot play in the West of Scotland Premier League - the 6th tier!
Who can forget 'Super Cally go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious'?
That was nothing compared to this
True. But an all time great headline none the less.
It is not our job to worry about Putin, or where his career might go next, or to engage in pointless Kremlinology. Our job is to help Ukraine win – as fast as possible.
Those heroic people are fighting for all of us. The Ukrainians are fighting for the Georgians, for the Moldovans, for the Baltic states, for the Poles – for anyone who might in due time be threatened by Putin's crazed revanchism and neo-imperialism. They are fighting for the principle that nations should not have their borders changed by force.
When Ukraine wins, that is a message that will be heard around the world. So let us help them win, not next year or the year after, but this year, 2023; and don't talk to me, finally, about expense.
If you want to minimise the world's economic pain, if you want to avoid the enormous cost – in blood and treasure – of letting this tragedy stretch on, then let's together do the obvious thing.
Let's give the Ukrainians all they need to win now.
Didn't Priti Patel get into bother running a freelance foreign policy?
Yes, because she actually did something, while in office.
An MP suggesting policy in a newspaper article has been a thing since newspapers were invented.
Boris Johnson is lucky the UK doesn’t have the equivalent of the Logan Act.
Under the Logan act, Representatives (Senators and Congresscriters) *suggesting* policy is fine. There was even a ruling that going to other countries to *discuss* policy is OK - providing it is clear that the Representative makes clear they are not negotiating.
Otherwise every op-ed written by every politician, on foreign affairs, would be a crime.
Debt interest payments on British government debt now running at ~£250 per person, per month.
But, no worries, doesn't have to be paid now, it's just added to the debt total.
These numbers are being distorted by the way the borrowing data are recorded on an accruals basis, which means that accrued payments relating to interest on index linked debt spike upwards when RPI inflation moves up a lot two months previously. We saw this in June (when accrued interest payments were even higher than in December) as RPI inflation increased thanks to rail fares and other regulated prices increasing in April and we have now seen the same thing in December after the energy related increase in RPI in October. The IFS wrote about the June increase here: https://ifs.org.uk/articles/governments-debt-interest-bill-june-hugely-increased-high-inflation-and-seasonal-effects. The borrowing numbers seen in other months that are around half the June/Dec level are more typical. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that government borrowing is high or the role of linkers in that, but it is worth noting that there are statistical quirks biasing the number in December higher and it's not representative of the actual cash debt payments the government is making every month.
Ah, okay, so it's the 1-month rate of RPI that is used for those payments?
The 1-month figures are quite volatile. The October figure that leads to these large interest payments was 2.5%, whereas the November and December figures are 0.6% and 0.6%.
So my original post should have said, ".. ~£250 per person, for December, and an average of ~£140 per person, per month."
during fiscal 2020/2021, more than half the population got more in benefits than they paid in tax
Which would be the year when the Covid pandemic was at its peak, when vaccines were only available to a lucky few, and much of the country was shut down.
We don't have more recent data. We certainly don't *know* that more than half the population are still that way.
With the way things have gone frankly I think locking down was the wrong decision. All old people do is tell young people we're feckless and claim benefits. I think fuck them, I put my life on hold for these arseholes and for what?
Society is about a contribution to the greater good not about the individual
Lockdown 1 was justified by the unknown. Lockdown 2 more difficult to justify. With hindsight lockdown 3 was probably wrong
But your hero was calling for harder and earlier lockdowns on every occasion
I dislike the shorthand of "lockdown", because I think you could achieve the same epidemiological need through voluntary adherence to public health advice to cut down social contact, and therefore viral transmission, rather than passing laws to regulate who can visit private residences. However, that aside*, my view on the three lockdowns was that:
Lockdown 1 was justified as an emergency response to an emergency situation.
Lockdowns 2 & 3 became necessary because the government failed to implement measures that would have reduced transmission without them, or to increase medical capacity. Tracing and isolation to prevent onward transmission was lamentably poor. Measures to improve ventilation and filtration of indoor spaces were lacking. The benefits of socialising outdoors were not fully exploited. Not enough was done to reduce re-importation of the virus from abroad.
* So, when I write, "lockdown," I'm using it as shorthand for, "society-wide action, voluntary or compulsory, to reduce viral transmission by reducing physical social contact."
That is sloppy. You can't just hand-wave away "voluntary or compulsory" and move on.
That is the critical element - the government made it illegal for you to have Auntie Flo round for tea. Would you have had Auntie Flo round for tea in the middle of a pandemic? That should have been your call. And Auntie Flo's, obvs.
I explained my reasoning. I wouldn't have had government legislation, but government advice. The virus, and the epidemiology, doesn't care about the difference, so when talking about what was required to reduce viral transmission the difference isn't important either, unless you think that there would have been a huge difference between adherence to advice than there was to adherence to the law.
Given the extent to which public behaviour changed in advance of legal restrictions being imposed, I don't think there would have been a huge difference.
There is a huge difference between legal obligation and voluntary choice. That is the very crux of the issue. Once that gets blurred then the govt can do whatever the hell they want. And just about have done these past three years.
It's not the crux of the issue, otherwise people would be talking about the ways in which you can encourage citizens in a mature democracy to do the right thing without compulsion.
Instead, we have arguments about whether it was necessary to slow down transmission of the virus at all - which is an entirely different argument.
We disagree. Introducing laws to determine how many people you can invite into your own home, or how many times you can leave it, or how many sesame toasts you're allowed in the pub, or any of the other measures that were introduced is just about as fundamental as you can get in terms of the nature of society.
Whatever (repeat: whatever) the reason.
I think you are misunderstanding me. It is an important question, but it's not the only question, and I was choosing to separate two questions. Those two questions are:
1. What was required from an epidemiological point of view to prevent large, avoidable, losses of life due to the virus?
2, How should the reduction in virus transmission required for question 1 be achieved in a mature democracy?
A lot of people who disagree with the government's actions on question 2, have chosen to make their argument by attacking the conclusions from question 1. I chose to answer question 2 briefly in my post to address the arguments around question 1.
I believe that we are in agreement on question 2, but you seem to confuse the two questions in most of your contributions to the topic, so I don't know what your view on question 1 is.
Question 1 can be answered via a public education campaign and nudges. Just like most other phenomena that involves potential loss of life and which involves restrictions on living a reasonable daily life without impediment (eg to live a reasonable daily life you don't have to get into a car if you are ideologically opposed to wearing seatbelts). For example our behaviour now with flu jabs. Flu now is responsible for a potentially large loss of life. Why, listen to the news reports.
Guido’s going for the Labour Comms team, who are talking at odds with the leadership: also the Lobby hacks who are trying their best to ignore the story. https://twitter.com/MediaGuido
Guardian reports asking Starmer does his call for respect and tolerance when discussing gender questions apply to his aides. Voldemort/ Doyle goes unnamed again.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
Every ex-pat British citizen should have to pay UK taxes, net of any local taxes they pay.
The only country that does that is the USA, with a floor of $120,000 of income.
It still leads to thousands of people renouncing their US citizenship every year, and places with no local income reporting requirements pay Americans a substantial part of their salary in cash.
It is not our job to worry about Putin, or where his career might go next, or to engage in pointless Kremlinology. Our job is to help Ukraine win – as fast as possible.
Those heroic people are fighting for all of us. The Ukrainians are fighting for the Georgians, for the Moldovans, for the Baltic states, for the Poles – for anyone who might in due time be threatened by Putin's crazed revanchism and neo-imperialism. They are fighting for the principle that nations should not have their borders changed by force.
When Ukraine wins, that is a message that will be heard around the world. So let us help them win, not next year or the year after, but this year, 2023; and don't talk to me, finally, about expense.
If you want to minimise the world's economic pain, if you want to avoid the enormous cost – in blood and treasure – of letting this tragedy stretch on, then let's together do the obvious thing.
Let's give the Ukrainians all they need to win now.
Didn't Priti Patel get into bother running a freelance foreign policy?
Yes, because she actually did something, while in office.
An MP suggesting policy in a newspaper article has been a thing since newspapers were invented.
Boris Johnson is lucky the UK doesn’t have the equivalent of the Logan Act.
Under the Logan act, Representatives (Senators and Congresscriters) *suggesting* policy is fine. There was even a ruling that going to other countries to *discuss* policy is OK - providing it is clear that the Representative makes clear they are not negotiating.
Otherwise every op-ed written by every politician, on foreign affairs, would be a crime.
It wouldn't be out of character for Johnson to be promising Zelensky fucking all sorts without any authority or even any capacity or intention to fulfill the promise.
The recent arrest of McGonigal is starting to throw up all kinds of stuff.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1617673023053778945 “When the C.I.A. noticed in late 2010 that its spies were disappearing…as fears of a mole grew, the government set up a secret task force….A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent, Charles McGonigal, was assigned to run it,” reported @nytimes in 2018.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Yes, absolutely. The problems are housing costs, housing costs, and housing costs.
Build more houses. Lots more houses. Then build yet more houses.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
1) Define inflation as anything but housing costs 2) Set a low inflation target 3) Meet the low inflation target on the back of the collapse in consumer goods prices (China) and the effective reduction of wages in low skilled jobs. 4) Prevent house building from matching the increase in the population 5) Be really really surprised that housing is incredibly expensive and in short supply in many areas. 6) Institute policies to make it easier to borrow more money to buy housing. 7) Prevent house building from matching the increase in the population 8) Be really really rally really surprised that housing is incredibly expensive and in short supply in many areas.
during fiscal 2020/2021, more than half the population got more in benefits than they paid in tax
Which would be the year when the Covid pandemic was at its peak, when vaccines were only available to a lucky few, and much of the country was shut down.
We don't have more recent data. We certainly don't *know* that more than half the population are still that way.
With the way things have gone frankly I think locking down was the wrong decision. All old people do is tell young people we're feckless and claim benefits. I think fuck them, I put my life on hold for these arseholes and for what?
Society is about a contribution to the greater good not about the individual
Lockdown 1 was justified by the unknown. Lockdown 2 more difficult to justify. With hindsight lockdown 3 was probably wrong
But your hero was calling for harder and earlier lockdowns on every occasion
I dislike the shorthand of "lockdown", because I think you could achieve the same epidemiological need through voluntary adherence to public health advice to cut down social contact, and therefore viral transmission, rather than passing laws to regulate who can visit private residences. However, that aside*, my view on the three lockdowns was that:
Lockdown 1 was justified as an emergency response to an emergency situation.
Lockdowns 2 & 3 became necessary because the government failed to implement measures that would have reduced transmission without them, or to increase medical capacity. Tracing and isolation to prevent onward transmission was lamentably poor. Measures to improve ventilation and filtration of indoor spaces were lacking. The benefits of socialising outdoors were not fully exploited. Not enough was done to reduce re-importation of the virus from abroad.
* So, when I write, "lockdown," I'm using it as shorthand for, "society-wide action, voluntary or compulsory, to reduce viral transmission by reducing physical social contact."
That is sloppy. You can't just hand-wave away "voluntary or compulsory" and move on.
That is the critical element - the government made it illegal for you to have Auntie Flo round for tea. Would you have had Auntie Flo round for tea in the middle of a pandemic? That should have been your call. And Auntie Flo's, obvs.
I explained my reasoning. I wouldn't have had government legislation, but government advice. The virus, and the epidemiology, doesn't care about the difference, so when talking about what was required to reduce viral transmission the difference isn't important either, unless you think that there would have been a huge difference between adherence to advice than there was to adherence to the law.
Given the extent to which public behaviour changed in advance of legal restrictions being imposed, I don't think there would have been a huge difference.
There is a huge difference between legal obligation and voluntary choice. That is the very crux of the issue. Once that gets blurred then the govt can do whatever the hell they want. And just about have done these past three years.
It's not the crux of the issue, otherwise people would be talking about the ways in which you can encourage citizens in a mature democracy to do the right thing without compulsion.
Instead, we have arguments about whether it was necessary to slow down transmission of the virus at all - which is an entirely different argument.
We disagree. Introducing laws to determine how many people you can invite into your own home, or how many times you can leave it, or how many sesame toasts you're allowed in the pub, or any of the other measures that were introduced is just about as fundamental as you can get in terms of the nature of society.
Whatever (repeat: whatever) the reason.
I think you are misunderstanding me. It is an important question, but it's not the only question, and I was choosing to separate two questions. Those two questions are:
1. What was required from an epidemiological point of view to prevent large, avoidable, losses of life due to the virus?
2, How should the reduction in virus transmission required for question 1 be achieved in a mature democracy?
A lot of people who disagree with the government's actions on question 2, have chosen to make their argument by attacking the conclusions from question 1. I chose to answer question 2 briefly in my post to address the arguments around question 1.
I believe that we are in agreement on question 2, but you seem to confuse the two questions in most of your contributions to the topic, so I don't know what your view on question 1 is.
Question 1 can be answered via a public education campaign and nudges. Just like most other phenomena that involves potential loss of life and which involves restrictions on living a reasonable daily life without impediment (eg to live a reasonable daily life you don't have to get into a car if you are ideologically opposed to wearing seatbelts). For example our behaviour now with flu jabs. Flu now is responsible for a potentially large loss of life. Why, listen to the news reports.
Yes, you are misunderstanding me, and the distinction between the two questions that I am drawing. I am sure it is my fault, but I do not currently see how to remedy the situation, so I will leave it there.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
Every ex-pat British citizen should have to pay UK taxes, net of any local taxes they pay.
I pay UK tax on my teacher pension and then additional tax on my Spanish declaration to take account of the fact that Spanish tax allowances are much lower than the UK. In addtion Spanish inheritance tax rules are much higher than in the UK in every respect. I also pay Spanish tax on my UK OAP. I also detest the term ex-pat which leads many to think they are not immigrants. Your point is clearly aimed at the super rich whose ability to avoid tax is always going to be way ahead of you.
Debt interest payments on British government debt now running at ~£250 per person, per month.
But, no worries, doesn't have to be paid now, it's just added to the debt total.
These numbers are being distorted by the way the borrowing data are recorded on an accruals basis, which means that accrued payments relating to interest on index linked debt spike upwards when RPI inflation moves up a lot two months previously. We saw this in June (when accrued interest payments were even higher than in December) as RPI inflation increased thanks to rail fares and other regulated prices increasing in April and we have now seen the same thing in December after the energy related increase in RPI in October. The IFS wrote about the June increase here: https://ifs.org.uk/articles/governments-debt-interest-bill-june-hugely-increased-high-inflation-and-seasonal-effects. The borrowing numbers seen in other months that are around half the June/Dec level are more typical. I'm not trying to downplay the fact that government borrowing is high or the role of linkers in that, but it is worth noting that there are statistical quirks biasing the number in December higher and it's not representative of the actual cash debt payments the government is making every month.
Ah, okay, so it's the 1-month rate of RPI that is used for those payments?
The 1-month figures are quite volatile. The October figure that leads to these large interest payments was 2.5%, whereas the November and December figures are 0.6% and 0.6%.
So my original post should have said, ".. ~£250 per person, for December, and an average of ~£140 per person, per month."
It's complicated but essentially the issue is accruals versus cash based accounting. The main fiscal aggregates are recorded on an accruals basis so when inflation goes up it implies higher linkers interest payments over many years and the increase accrues in the month when it happens (or actually 2 months later) not when the cash payments are made. So yes interest payments have gone up and yes a lot is down to linkers but no the December number is not a good measure of the cash payments the government is making every month. Cash borrowing is still below the OBR's November forecast, fiscal year to date.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
Every ex-pat British citizen should have to pay UK taxes, net of any local taxes they pay.
The only country that does that is the USA, with a floor of $120,000 of income.
It still leads to thousands of people renouncing their US citizenship every year, and places with no local income reporting requirements pay Americans a substantial part of their salary in cash.
Sure, those who prefer to renounce their British citizenship rather than pay UK taxes would be welcome to do so.
There will always be people defrauding the tax system by taking undeclared earnings in cash of course. Most don't though.
during fiscal 2020/2021, more than half the population got more in benefits than they paid in tax
Which would be the year when the Covid pandemic was at its peak, when vaccines were only available to a lucky few, and much of the country was shut down.
We don't have more recent data. We certainly don't *know* that more than half the population are still that way.
With the way things have gone frankly I think locking down was the wrong decision. All old people do is tell young people we're feckless and claim benefits. I think fuck them, I put my life on hold for these arseholes and for what?
Society is about a contribution to the greater good not about the individual
Lockdown 1 was justified by the unknown. Lockdown 2 more difficult to justify. With hindsight lockdown 3 was probably wrong
But your hero was calling for harder and earlier lockdowns on every occasion
I dislike the shorthand of "lockdown", because I think you could achieve the same epidemiological need through voluntary adherence to public health advice to cut down social contact, and therefore viral transmission, rather than passing laws to regulate who can visit private residences. However, that aside*, my view on the three lockdowns was that:
Lockdown 1 was justified as an emergency response to an emergency situation.
Lockdowns 2 & 3 became necessary because the government failed to implement measures that would have reduced transmission without them, or to increase medical capacity. Tracing and isolation to prevent onward transmission was lamentably poor. Measures to improve ventilation and filtration of indoor spaces were lacking. The benefits of socialising outdoors were not fully exploited. Not enough was done to reduce re-importation of the virus from abroad.
* So, when I write, "lockdown," I'm using it as shorthand for, "society-wide action, voluntary or compulsory, to reduce viral transmission by reducing physical social contact."
That is sloppy. You can't just hand-wave away "voluntary or compulsory" and move on.
That is the critical element - the government made it illegal for you to have Auntie Flo round for tea. Would you have had Auntie Flo round for tea in the middle of a pandemic? That should have been your call. And Auntie Flo's, obvs.
I explained my reasoning. I wouldn't have had government legislation, but government advice. The virus, and the epidemiology, doesn't care about the difference, so when talking about what was required to reduce viral transmission the difference isn't important either, unless you think that there would have been a huge difference between adherence to advice than there was to adherence to the law.
Given the extent to which public behaviour changed in advance of legal restrictions being imposed, I don't think there would have been a huge difference.
There is a huge difference between legal obligation and voluntary choice. That is the very crux of the issue. Once that gets blurred then the govt can do whatever the hell they want. And just about have done these past three years.
It's not the crux of the issue, otherwise people would be talking about the ways in which you can encourage citizens in a mature democracy to do the right thing without compulsion.
Instead, we have arguments about whether it was necessary to slow down transmission of the virus at all - which is an entirely different argument.
We disagree. Introducing laws to determine how many people you can invite into your own home, or how many times you can leave it, or how many sesame toasts you're allowed in the pub, or any of the other measures that were introduced is just about as fundamental as you can get in terms of the nature of society.
Whatever (repeat: whatever) the reason.
I think you are misunderstanding me. It is an important question, but it's not the only question, and I was choosing to separate two questions. Those two questions are:
1. What was required from an epidemiological point of view to prevent large, avoidable, losses of life due to the virus?
2, How should the reduction in virus transmission required for question 1 be achieved in a mature democracy?
A lot of people who disagree with the government's actions on question 2, have chosen to make their argument by attacking the conclusions from question 1. I chose to answer question 2 briefly in my post to address the arguments around question 1.
I believe that we are in agreement on question 2, but you seem to confuse the two questions in most of your contributions to the topic, so I don't know what your view on question 1 is.
Question 1 can be answered via a public education campaign and nudges. Just like most other phenomena that involves potential loss of life and which involves restrictions on living a reasonable daily life without impediment (eg to live a reasonable daily life you don't have to get into a car if you are ideologically opposed to wearing seatbelts). For example our behaviour now with flu jabs. Flu now is responsible for a potentially large loss of life. Why, listen to the news reports.
Yes, you are misunderstanding me, and the distinction between the two questions that I am drawing. I am sure it is my fault, but I do not currently see how to remedy the situation, so I will leave it there.
Bloody hell you've now made me go and read what you actually wrote and yes I agree with you.
It was the asterisk that triggered me but I see now that it was not the main thrust of your point. With which I agree.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Yes, absolutely. The problems are housing costs, housing costs, and housing costs.
Build more houses. Lots more houses. Then build yet more houses.
The problems are deeper than this I am afraid. I think that you could build as many houses as you want in Redcar but build costs and regulation mean that a 1 bed flat will always be £600 per month either in terms of rent or mortgage payments... The problem is everything to do with the cost of building and regulation. Unfortunately, unless you want to try and reduce regulation or find a way of building housing for less... The only real solution is to increase wages.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
In the past I've commented on the fact that PB tends to those in "high-end" employment. Clean, modern offices, new furniture. New computers on each desk. HR enforces the law - literally.
The other day, a grad told us the following. In her flat share (one person per room), the landlord had come in and divided the living room into 2 new bedrooms. So now she is living in a 5 bed flat with no living room.
This is a "posh" flat in a new build, nice view of the river etc.
The practises that are common for those living in the "low-end" part of the economy are spreading up the economic chain.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Not so. You could achieve the same end - increasing the teacher's disposable income - by reducing his living expenses.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Yes, absolutely. The problems are housing costs, housing costs, and housing costs.
Build more houses. Lots more houses. Then build yet more houses.
The problems are deeper than this I am afraid. I think that you could build as many houses as you want in Redcar but build costs and regulation mean that a 1 bed flat will always be £600 per month either in terms of rent or mortgage payments... The problem is everything to do with the cost of building and regulation. Unfortunately, unless you want to try and reduce regulation or find a way of building housing for less... The only real solution is to increase wages.
A large portion of the cost of construction is the wages. Not just direct, but in the cost of materials.
Wages, especially for the lower paid, are defined, largely, by housing cost.
Note, historically, the interest by forward thinking employers in providing reasonable quality homes close to their bsuinesses.
during fiscal 2020/2021, more than half the population got more in benefits than they paid in tax
Which would be the year when the Covid pandemic was at its peak, when vaccines were only available to a lucky few, and much of the country was shut down.
We don't have more recent data. We certainly don't *know* that more than half the population are still that way.
With the way things have gone frankly I think locking down was the wrong decision. All old people do is tell young people we're feckless and claim benefits. I think fuck them, I put my life on hold for these arseholes and for what?
Society is about a contribution to the greater good not about the individual
Lockdown 1 was justified by the unknown. Lockdown 2 more difficult to justify. With hindsight lockdown 3 was probably wrong
But your hero was calling for harder and earlier lockdowns on every occasion
I dislike the shorthand of "lockdown", because I think you could achieve the same epidemiological need through voluntary adherence to public health advice to cut down social contact, and therefore viral transmission, rather than passing laws to regulate who can visit private residences. However, that aside*, my view on the three lockdowns was that:
Lockdown 1 was justified as an emergency response to an emergency situation.
Lockdowns 2 & 3 became necessary because the government failed to implement measures that would have reduced transmission without them, or to increase medical capacity. Tracing and isolation to prevent onward transmission was lamentably poor. Measures to improve ventilation and filtration of indoor spaces were lacking. The benefits of socialising outdoors were not fully exploited. Not enough was done to reduce re-importation of the virus from abroad.
* So, when I write, "lockdown," I'm using it as shorthand for, "society-wide action, voluntary or compulsory, to reduce viral transmission by reducing physical social contact."
That is sloppy. You can't just hand-wave away "voluntary or compulsory" and move on.
That is the critical element - the government made it illegal for you to have Auntie Flo round for tea. Would you have had Auntie Flo round for tea in the middle of a pandemic? That should have been your call. And Auntie Flo's, obvs.
I explained my reasoning. I wouldn't have had government legislation, but government advice. The virus, and the epidemiology, doesn't care about the difference, so when talking about what was required to reduce viral transmission the difference isn't important either, unless you think that there would have been a huge difference between adherence to advice than there was to adherence to the law.
Given the extent to which public behaviour changed in advance of legal restrictions being imposed, I don't think there would have been a huge difference.
There is a huge difference between legal obligation and voluntary choice. That is the very crux of the issue. Once that gets blurred then the govt can do whatever the hell they want. And just about have done these past three years.
It's not the crux of the issue, otherwise people would be talking about the ways in which you can encourage citizens in a mature democracy to do the right thing without compulsion.
Instead, we have arguments about whether it was necessary to slow down transmission of the virus at all - which is an entirely different argument.
We disagree. Introducing laws to determine how many people you can invite into your own home, or how many times you can leave it, or how many sesame toasts you're allowed in the pub, or any of the other measures that were introduced is just about as fundamental as you can get in terms of the nature of society.
Whatever (repeat: whatever) the reason.
I think you are misunderstanding me. It is an important question, but it's not the only question, and I was choosing to separate two questions. Those two questions are:
1. What was required from an epidemiological point of view to prevent large, avoidable, losses of life due to the virus?
2, How should the reduction in virus transmission required for question 1 be achieved in a mature democracy?
A lot of people who disagree with the government's actions on question 2, have chosen to make their argument by attacking the conclusions from question 1. I chose to answer question 2 briefly in my post to address the arguments around question 1.
I believe that we are in agreement on question 2, but you seem to confuse the two questions in most of your contributions to the topic, so I don't know what your view on question 1 is.
Question 1 can be answered via a public education campaign and nudges. Just like most other phenomena that involves potential loss of life and which involves restrictions on living a reasonable daily life without impediment (eg to live a reasonable daily life you don't have to get into a car if you are ideologically opposed to wearing seatbelts). For example our behaviour now with flu jabs. Flu now is responsible for a potentially large loss of life. Why, listen to the news reports.
Yes, you are misunderstanding me, and the distinction between the two questions that I am drawing. I am sure it is my fault, but I do not currently see how to remedy the situation, so I will leave it there.
Bloody hell you've now made me go and read what you actually wrote and yes I agree with you.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
In the past I've commented on the fact that PB tends to those in "high-end" employment. Clean, modern offices, new furniture. New computers on each desk. HR enforces the law - literally.
The other day, a grad told us the following. In her flat share (one person per room), the landlord had come in and divided the living room into 2 new bedrooms. So now she is living in a 5 bed flat with no living room.
This is a "posh" flat in a new build, nice view of the river etc.
The practises that are common for those living in the "low-end" part of the economy are spreading up the economic chain.
It used to be that you could move to somewhere like Redcar to get out of this problem... but apparently no more.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Not so. You could achieve the same end - increasing the teacher's disposable income - by reducing his living expenses.
How so? State subsidised Electricity and Gas? Free Netflix? He was paying £350 for a car, that could probably be reduced to something like £125. That is the only obvious saving. But if you are a teacher, you need a reliable car to get to work.
As well as not having photo ID to vote, it turns out I've not got any identifying documents that will allow me to check my NIC record via the government gateway.
It doesn't get easier after that. To actually make a payment instead of using your NI and missing year as a payment reference you need to phone and queue for 45 mins to get an 18 digit reference number that does the same thing instead.
Indeed. It's surprisingly easy to get caught like that. A relative of mine is in the same position as DJL: my commiserations to the latter.
Edit: all the more reason to do it asap, well before the 5 April deadline, before everyone else discovers the same.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Yes, absolutely. The problems are housing costs, housing costs, and housing costs.
Build more houses. Lots more houses. Then build yet more houses.
The problems are deeper than this I am afraid. I think that you could build as many houses as you want in Redcar but build costs and regulation mean that a 1 bed flat will always be £600 per month either in terms of rent or mortgage payments... The problem is everything to do with the cost of building and regulation. Unfortunately, unless you want to try and reduce regulation or find a way of building housing for less... The only real solution is to increase wages.
A large portion of the cost of construction is the wages. Not just direct, but in the cost of materials.
Wages, especially for the lower paid, are defined, largely, by housing cost.
Note, historically, the interest by forward thinking employers in providing reasonable quality homes close to their bsuinesses.
It is about a 70/30 split I think, wages/materials for the basic standard of housebuilding, which is based on a lot of manual labour. But there have been big increases in the minimum wage, obviously reflecting general inflation. If demand for housebuilding goes down, then build costs could go down, but this will be symptomatic of not much housebuilding going on, which would have its own negative consequences.
I, for one, am reassured that the PB community is so familiar with Mr. Eagles' lack of historical knowledge that many took the trebuchet query at face value.
Boris has the front page dedicated to his plea to give Ukraine everything they need:
It pleases me incredibly that the British right is so antifascist.
Whereas *some* on the left... I cannot describe the post an ex-colleague of mine put on FB last night about Ukraine. Many supporters of the Ukrainians are Nazis, the Russians were forced into the war, and "NATO has always been a violent force".
He is very much a leftist and Corbynite, although now a green due to Corbyn being chucked out of Labour.
The horse-shoe theory of political beliefs in action. The far left and the far right both seem to be big fans of Russia - the other 90% of us in the middle, not so much.
I know I keep saying it, but whatever one might think of Boris Johnson, he’s always been right about Ukraine, and everyone needs to up their game and win this war. Yes, Herr Scholz, that includes you. Get the tanks rolling East.
I, for one, am reassured that the PB community is so familiar with Mr. Eagles' lack of historical knowledge that many took the trebuchet query at face value.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Not so. You could achieve the same end - increasing the teacher's disposable income - by reducing his living expenses.
How so? State subsidised Electricity and Gas? Free Netflix? He was paying £350 for a car, that could probably be reduced to something like £125. That is the only obvious saving. But if you are a teacher, you need a reliable car to get to work.
I agree with others that the housing market is broken and so we have an excessive transfer of wealth from renters to landowners, and from first-time buyers to those who have paid off their mortgages.
I think there are likely to be inefficiencies in other markets that lead to higher prices than are necessary. The behaviour of many telecommunication companies in increasing prices every year by CPI +3.9% has the air of a market where prices are artificially high. It would be surprising if there were not further opportunities to increase efficiency in the market and so reduce living costs.
Boris has the front page dedicated to his plea to give Ukraine everything they need:
It pleases me incredibly that the British right is so antifascist.
Whereas *some* on the left... I cannot describe the post an ex-colleague of mine put on FB last night about Ukraine. Many supporters of the Ukrainians are Nazis, the Russians were forced into the war, and "NATO has always been a violent force".
He is very much a leftist and Corbynite, although now a green due to Corbyn being chucked out of Labour.
The horse-shoe theory of political beliefs in action. The far left and the far right both seem to be big fans of Russia - the other 90% of us in the middle, not so much.
I know I keep saying it, but whatever one might think of Boris Johnson, he’s always been right about Ukraine, and everyone needs to up their game and win this war. Yes, Herr Scholz, that includes you. Get the tanks rolling East.
Herr Scholz is doing rather more than Herr Sunak.
That is not what a number of Eastern European countries are saying. Quite loudly.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Not so. You could achieve the same end - increasing the teacher's disposable income - by reducing his living expenses.
How so? State subsidised Electricity and Gas? Free Netflix? He was paying £350 for a car, that could probably be reduced to something like £125. That is the only obvious saving. But if you are a teacher, you need a reliable car to get to work.
Building more houses and bringing down housing cost is the obvious one and probably something on energy costs by investing in loads more energy generation, maybe fix the competition for petrol forecourts as well, consumers are still paying 6-9p more per litre today than they were at equivalent sterling prices and that's with the government's 5p cut in fuel duty included so retailers are padding margins by 11-14p depending on where you are in the country.
There's loads that could be done if we had properly functioning markets, but instead we have cartel like situations in big swathes of the economy and asset owners who are happy to earn rent rather than invest because there's no penalties for it.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Not so. You could achieve the same end - increasing the teacher's disposable income - by reducing his living expenses.
How so? State subsidised Electricity and Gas? Free Netflix? He was paying £350 for a car, that could probably be reduced to something like £125. That is the only obvious saving. But if you are a teacher, you need a reliable car to get to work.
Only one spare kidney, and (apparently) no children to sell. Hard, isn't it?
As he's a grad in the 30s, he presumably has a student loan as well, with interest the way it is on that.
Boris has the front page dedicated to his plea to give Ukraine everything they need:
It pleases me incredibly that the British right is so antifascist.
Whereas *some* on the left... I cannot describe the post an ex-colleague of mine put on FB last night about Ukraine. Many supporters of the Ukrainians are Nazis, the Russians were forced into the war, and "NATO has always been a violent force".
He is very much a leftist and Corbynite, although now a green due to Corbyn being chucked out of Labour.
The horse-shoe theory of political beliefs in action. The far left and the far right both seem to be big fans of Russia - the other 90% of us in the middle, not so much.
I know I keep saying it, but whatever one might think of Boris Johnson, he’s always been right about Ukraine, and everyone needs to up their game and win this war. Yes, Herr Scholz, that includes you. Get the tanks rolling East.
Herr Scholz is doing rather more than Herr Sunak.
Sorry, but that’s total bollocks!
UK has pledged tanks and is training Ukranians on them. Germany has not only failed to pledge tanks, but is doing its damndest to prevent other countries from pledging German-made tanks as well.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Not so. You could achieve the same end - increasing the teacher's disposable income - by reducing his living expenses.
How so? State subsidised Electricity and Gas? Free Netflix? He was paying £350 for a car, that could probably be reduced to something like £125. That is the only obvious saving. But if you are a teacher, you need a reliable car to get to work.
The only way realistic to reduce living expenses is to reduce cost of property - firstly because any other changes (a cheaper car say or only buying the value range in a supermarket) directly impacts your quality of life
And because housing cost impact everything else because higher housing costs mean wages need to be higher so anything that involves human beings is more expensive. Which is why even in the 70's everything cost slightly more in London and wages had a London Allowance.
And why in Switzerland electrical goods appear very cheap compared to wages because the price of anything else (such as a meal or cup of coffee) is high due to local labour prices.
As for the solution move north asap before the latest set of house price inflation impacts the areas it hasn't hit yet.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Yes, absolutely. The problems are housing costs, housing costs, and housing costs.
Build more houses. Lots more houses. Then build yet more houses.
The problems are deeper than this I am afraid. I think that you could build as many houses as you want in Redcar but build costs and regulation mean that a 1 bed flat will always be £600 per month either in terms of rent or mortgage payments... The problem is everything to do with the cost of building and regulation. Unfortunately, unless you want to try and reduce regulation or find a way of building housing for less... The only real solution is to increase wages.
A large portion of the cost of construction is the wages. Not just direct, but in the cost of materials.
Wages, especially for the lower paid, are defined, largely, by housing cost.
Note, historically, the interest by forward thinking employers in providing reasonable quality homes close to their bsuinesses.
It is about a 70/30 split I think, wages/materials for the basic standard of housebuilding, which is based on a lot of manual labour. But there have been big increases in the minimum wage, obviously reflecting general inflation. If demand for housebuilding goes down, then build costs could go down, but this will be symptomatic of not much housebuilding going on, which would have its own negative consequences.
Build costs might well go up, if there was a serious contraction in house building.
If house prices go down, the pressure will be on build costs.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
Yes, absolutely. The problems are housing costs, housing costs, and housing costs.
Build more houses. Lots more houses. Then build yet more houses.
The problems are deeper than this I am afraid. I think that you could build as many houses as you want in Redcar but build costs and regulation mean that a 1 bed flat will always be £600 per month either in terms of rent or mortgage payments... The problem is everything to do with the cost of building and regulation. Unfortunately, unless you want to try and reduce regulation or find a way of building housing for less... The only real solution is to increase wages.
A large portion of the cost of construction is the wages. Not just direct, but in the cost of materials.
Wages, especially for the lower paid, are defined, largely, by housing cost.
Note, historically, the interest by forward thinking employers in providing reasonable quality homes close to their bsuinesses.
It is about a 70/30 split I think, wages/materials for the basic standard of housebuilding, which is based on a lot of manual labour. But there have been big increases in the minimum wage, obviously reflecting general inflation. If demand for housebuilding goes down, then build costs could go down, but this will be symptomatic of not much housebuilding going on, which would have its own negative consequences.
Build costs might well go up, if there was a serious contraction in house building.
If house prices go down, the pressure will be on build costs.
The way to fix build costs, is with technology. Prefab houses offsite, and ship them in on half a dozen lorries. Government to underwrite 20-year mortgages on them if built to a defined standard. A handful of factories could churn out hundreds of units per week. Target price £100k for a 3-bed, plus land cost.
Progressive taxation under Labour the Tories: FYI, a couple of interesting (🤓) tables on income #tax from #HMRC (basically showing 'the rich' *are* paying more tax)...
1. the % shares of total income tax paid by different income groups (the shares paid by the top 10%, 5% and 1% have all risen over the last decade... (1/2)
2. the percentage shares of total income for each percentile group (these haven't changed much over the last decade, meaning that higher earners are paying more #tax on roughly the same share of income). (2/2) https://twitter.com/julianhjessop/status/1617601327856586752
Oh no, not data!
Opinion, that “the rich” need to be taxed more, is much easier to sell to the electorate as a whole, who never think it will affect *them*. IIRC the top decile starts at about £60k annual income, way lower than most people think it would be.
More seriously, those numbers are a precursor to emigration (and immigration forgone), and it doesn’t need many of the top 1% to change their behavior, to have a large effect on the total tax take.
That tiktok video is absolutely devastating. It explains middle class impoverishment in the UK, the guy was an experienced primary school teacher in the UK in his mid 30's earning £33k, and only had £170 per month to live on after he had paid his living expenses... So actually, you would have to increase his wage by about 10k to make it worth him staying in the UK, IE so he could save up to buy a house, and THEN uprate the pay by inflation every year going forward. None of that will happen. What we have now got is the problems of London of the past 2 decades (where you can only live if you are a co-habiting couple or live in a houseshare) expanded to the whole country.
In the past I've commented on the fact that PB tends to those in "high-end" employment. Clean, modern offices, new furniture. New computers on each desk. HR enforces the law - literally.
The other day, a grad told us the following. In her flat share (one person per room), the landlord had come in and divided the living room into 2 new bedrooms. So now she is living in a 5 bed flat with no living room.
This is a "posh" flat in a new build, nice view of the river etc.
The practises that are common for those living in the "low-end" part of the economy are spreading up the economic chain.
The fundamental problem is population ageing, which has been exacerbated by policy failures. Between 1980 and 2009 the old age dependency ratio (numbers aged 65+ to those aged 15-64) was stable, moving from 0.23 to 0.24. Since then it has increased to 0.31. In 10 years it is expected to be 0.37 and by the end of this century 0.6 - so in terms of the ageing shock this has only just started. (UN data). Ageing has a number of effects that are contributing to the current crisis: * direct costs on working age people via taxation * A shortage of workers that increases costs to business and encourages/requires immigration * immigration plus old people remaining in family homes creates a housing shortage * higher taxes and housing costs encourages emigration of mobile and higher skilled workers, increasing tax burden on those remaining. Policy failures include regulatory impediments to housing supply, self defeating austerity policies that shrank the economy, and failure to raise the pension age sufficiently and to improve public health. Plus Brexit that has added to business costs and reduced tax revenue (also made it harder for retirees to move overseas). Ultimately, we have to realise that ageing poses an existential threat to our way of life that requires a complete rethink of our lifestyles, the welfare state, everything. We simply cannot afford to support increasing numbers of elderly people living in poor health - younger workers won't take it. This isn't an attack on old people - a group I love and respect and who I will be a member of sooner than I'd like to think. It's just arithmetic.
On topic, lots of organisations preach their values, and have the "right" policies, but far fewer live them. In my experience senior leaders need to model the behaviours they want otherwise, as @Cyclefree says, the message will be ignored, and the messenger shot. I've been shocked at how many bad and selfish behaviours I've seen at the top level of organisations as much as I've been awed by respect and admiration for (the far fewer) number of leaders of real integrity.
Most employees tend to reflect their boss and the organisation culture he/she creates, and private and public clients mustn't reward leaders who model the wrong ones.
It is not our job to worry about Putin, or where his career might go next, or to engage in pointless Kremlinology. Our job is to help Ukraine win – as fast as possible.
Those heroic people are fighting for all of us. The Ukrainians are fighting for the Georgians, for the Moldovans, for the Baltic states, for the Poles – for anyone who might in due time be threatened by Putin's crazed revanchism and neo-imperialism. They are fighting for the principle that nations should not have their borders changed by force.
When Ukraine wins, that is a message that will be heard around the world. So let us help them win, not next year or the year after, but this year, 2023; and don't talk to me, finally, about expense.
If you want to minimise the world's economic pain, if you want to avoid the enormous cost – in blood and treasure – of letting this tragedy stretch on, then let's together do the obvious thing.
Let's give the Ukrainians all they need to win now.
He was always at his best with slightly vague boosterism, it's what he is made for far more than trying to run a country.
I think there is a basic point where a full on invasion of this nature (well beyond even the 2014 snatch and grab) means the kind of tip toeing worry about provoking Putin or giving him an excuse to escalate no longer really works, if it ever did. There's still the sensible worry about him being so mad he might go nuclear, but short of that what further escalation can he realistically threaten, in which case there should be less coyness around backing his opponents in Ukraine.
The bolded bit is the critical bit, but it's the bit you skated over.
Why is it critical? If you believe it to be true, weakening our support for Ukraine will not make him any less mad.
It's why support for Ukraine has to be moderated. If the Russian army is routed, it becomes more likely that Putin will resort to nukes. The least dangerous strategy is to grind Russia down in a long way of attrition that is less likely to provide a trigger for nuclear war. Ukraine has to win, but nuclear war must be avoided.
Garbage , we should be sending more and longer range weapons so Ukraine can beat the crap out of them. Last thing we need is cowardluy appeasers like you whining about the poor Russians.
You're on fire this morning Malc - a few Buckies to the good by 9am?
Hello Topping , Never drink during day Monday to Friday , if at all after 6pm. may do so at weekend but again never before late afternoon minimum. Just invigorated when I see stuff like the crap Horsey boy posts. Sure are some serious f**knuggets on here, they woudl make Marie Antoinette seem like a peasant.
It is not our job to worry about Putin, or where his career might go next, or to engage in pointless Kremlinology. Our job is to help Ukraine win – as fast as possible.
Those heroic people are fighting for all of us. The Ukrainians are fighting for the Georgians, for the Moldovans, for the Baltic states, for the Poles – for anyone who might in due time be threatened by Putin's crazed revanchism and neo-imperialism. They are fighting for the principle that nations should not have their borders changed by force.
When Ukraine wins, that is a message that will be heard around the world. So let us help them win, not next year or the year after, but this year, 2023; and don't talk to me, finally, about expense.
If you want to minimise the world's economic pain, if you want to avoid the enormous cost – in blood and treasure – of letting this tragedy stretch on, then let's together do the obvious thing.
Let's give the Ukrainians all they need to win now.
He was always at his best with slightly vague boosterism, it's what he is made for far more than trying to run a country.
I think there is a basic point where a full on invasion of this nature (well beyond even the 2014 snatch and grab) means the kind of tip toeing worry about provoking Putin or giving him an excuse to escalate no longer really works, if it ever did. There's still the sensible worry about him being so mad he might go nuclear, but short of that what further escalation can he realistically threaten, in which case there should be less coyness around backing his opponents in Ukraine.
The bolded bit is the critical bit, but it's the bit you skated over.
Why is it critical? If you believe it to be true, weakening our support for Ukraine will not make him any less mad.
It's why support for Ukraine has to be moderated. If the Russian army is routed, it becomes more likely that Putin will resort to nukes. The least dangerous strategy is to grind Russia down in a long way of attrition that is less likely to provide a trigger for nuclear war. Ukraine has to win, but nuclear war must be avoided.
Garbage , we should be sending more and longer range weapons so Ukraine can beat the crap out of them. Last thing we need is cowardluy appeasers like you whining about the poor Russians.
You seem to have completely missed the point of my post.
There's a rather shocking table on page 18 of the Civitas report that triggered the Daily Mail, that shows that even the top income quintile of retired people receive more in benefits than they pay in tax.
I didn't notice the DM headlining on that particular nugget.
Benefits in kind includes the NHS. Do you think think the basic principle of allocating resources by need should change?
Surely though the top quintile are not in “need”.
They're more in need of expensive healthcare then most people of working age, and it would be hard for them to pay enough tax to pay for that as they go. Whether implicitly, through being net contributors during their working life, or explicitly with an insurance fund, you would expect that people would build up an entitlement to a pension and healthcare that they would drawdown once they retired.
This is how the system is designed. It should come as no surprise.
The problem we are facing now is that because our system was designed as a pay as you go system, the baby boomer generation didn't have to contribute all that much while they were working, because they had much fewer pensioners to support. And now there are relatively many fewer people of working age to provide their expected benefits. If we then try to transition to an explicit insurance fund model, where people pay ahead for their own care, rather than expect the next generation to stump up for it, then the poor bloody generation caught in the middle will end up having to pay for their own retirement as well as for their parents.
Are being thick deliberately. They paid the same NI that you losers pay nowadays and they did not whinge but scrimped and saved to better themselves. Unlike the lazy good for nothing whinging pension hating loser freeloaders on here.
And you learned so little from these people who "did not whinge"...
I was too busy working hard so I could look after myself in life and have no need to want to rob pensioners of their hard earned pittance.
Watched the end of that. "who?" "Where?" "Playing in what league?"
Has there ever been a bigger upset than this in Scotland or England cup ties? All the big FA Cup ones I can think of we're Conference sides beating old Division One. This lot play in the West of Scotland Premier League - the 6th tier!
Who can forget 'Super Cally go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious'?
That was nothing compared to this
True. But an all time great headline none the less.
I was almost going to go last night but thought it might be all ticket , would have been great game to be at going by TV.
Boris has the front page dedicated to his plea to give Ukraine everything they need:
It pleases me incredibly that the British right is so antifascist.
Whereas *some* on the left... I cannot describe the post an ex-colleague of mine put on FB last night about Ukraine. Many supporters of the Ukrainians are Nazis, the Russians were forced into the war, and "NATO has always been a violent force".
He is very much a leftist and Corbynite, although now a green due to Corbyn being chucked out of Labour.
The horse-shoe theory of political beliefs in action. The far left and the far right both seem to be big fans of Russia - the other 90% of us in the middle, not so much.
I know I keep saying it, but whatever one might think of Boris Johnson, he’s always been right about Ukraine, and everyone needs to up their game and win this war. Yes, Herr Scholz, that includes you. Get the tanks rolling East.
Herr Scholz is doing rather more than Herr Sunak.
Sorry, but that’s total bollocks!
UK has pledged tanks and is training Ukranians on them. Germany has not only failed to pledge tanks, but is doing its damndest to prevent other countries from pledging German-made tanks as well.
Well as Germany are second biggest contributor to Ukraine and the US are first I reckon that makes the UK at best third.
Comments
https://oltnews.com/us-states-recruit-european-cleantech-groups-with-green-grants
Economic officials in several US states have stepped up efforts to lure European clean energy companies across the Atlantic, touting the significant tax advantages offered to foreign developers despite the bitter backlash from European leaders.
Delegations from Michigan, Georgia, Ohio and other states scoured Europe armed with details of the juicy subsidies offered by the Cut Inflation Act, the landmark climate legislation administration of Joe Biden adopted in August.
“I don’t think we’ve actively recruited companies as intensely as we are now,” said Justin Kocher, director of international affairs for JobsOhio. Ohio officials have met with cleantech companies in Germany, Italy and Belgium over the past four months.
The IRA will provide around $370 billion in clean energy grants, marking the most ambitious US effort to tackle climate change, but has sparked heavy criticism in Brussels and allegations that states States discriminate against European companies...
An MP suggesting policy in a newspaper article has been a thing since newspapers were invented.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/23/machine-gun-wielding-murderer-accepted-uk-child-asylum-seeker/
“On his journey from Afghanistan to Bournemouth, Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai travelled through at least five different countries, became a convicted drug dealer, and was sentenced to 20 years in a Serbian prison for murdering two of his countrymen with a Kalashnikov.
“The asylum seeker, who on Monday was found guilty of murdering an aspiring Royal Marine, was able to board a ferry in Cherbourg, France and travel to the UK despite his criminal record, and having an asylum claim rejected by the Norwegian authorities a few weeks earlier.
“In December 2019 he claimed asylum in Poole, Dorset after falsely telling a Home Office interviewer he was just 14-years-old when he was in fact at least 18.”
True. But an all time great headline none the less.
Otherwise every op-ed written by every politician, on foreign affairs, would be a crime.
The 1-month figures are quite volatile. The October figure that leads to these large interest payments was 2.5%, whereas the November and December figures are 0.6% and 0.6%.
So my original post should have said, ".. ~£250 per person, for December, and an average of ~£140 per person, per month."
https://twitter.com/MediaGuido/status/1617807052851793921
It still leads to thousands of people renouncing their US citizenship every year, and places with no local income reporting requirements pay Americans a substantial part of their salary in cash.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1617673023053778945
“When the C.I.A. noticed in late 2010 that its spies were disappearing…as fears of a mole grew, the government set up a secret task force….A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent, Charles McGonigal, was assigned to run it,” reported @nytimes
in 2018.
Build more houses. Lots more houses. Then build yet more houses.
2) Set a low inflation target
3) Meet the low inflation target on the back of the collapse in consumer goods prices (China) and the effective reduction of wages in low skilled jobs.
4) Prevent house building from matching the increase in the population
5) Be really really surprised that housing is incredibly expensive and in short supply in many areas.
6) Institute policies to make it easier to borrow more money to buy housing.
7) Prevent house building from matching the increase in the population
8) Be really really rally really surprised that housing is incredibly expensive and in short supply in many areas.
Could be wrong, of course.
In my excuse one always assumes TSE historical awareness stops around the Battle of Marathon..
There will always be people defrauding the tax system by taking undeclared earnings in cash of course. Most don't though.
It was the asterisk that triggered me but I see now that it was not the main thrust of your point. With which I agree.
The other day, a grad told us the following. In her flat share (one person per room), the landlord had come in and divided the living room into 2 new bedrooms. So now she is living in a 5 bed flat with no living room.
This is a "posh" flat in a new build, nice view of the river etc.
The practises that are common for those living in the "low-end" part of the economy are spreading up the economic chain.
Wages, especially for the lower paid, are defined, largely, by housing cost.
Note, historically, the interest by forward thinking employers in providing reasonable quality homes close to their bsuinesses.
He was paying £350 for a car, that could probably be reduced to something like £125. That is the only obvious saving. But if you are a teacher, you need a reliable car to get to work.
Edit: all the more reason to do it asap, well before the 5 April deadline, before everyone else discovers the same.
I think there are likely to be inefficiencies in other markets that lead to higher prices than are necessary. The behaviour of many telecommunication companies in increasing prices every year by CPI +3.9% has the air of a market where prices are artificially high. It would be surprising if there were not further opportunities to increase efficiency in the market and so reduce living costs.
There's loads that could be done if we had properly functioning markets, but instead we have cartel like situations in big swathes of the economy and asset owners who are happy to earn rent rather than invest because there's no penalties for it.
As he's a grad in the 30s, he presumably has a student loan as well, with interest the way it is on that.
UK has pledged tanks and is training Ukranians on them. Germany has not only failed to pledge tanks, but is doing its damndest to prevent other countries from pledging German-made tanks as well.
And because housing cost impact everything else because higher housing costs mean wages need to be higher so anything that involves human beings is more expensive. Which is why even in the 70's everything cost slightly more in London and wages had a London Allowance.
And why in Switzerland electrical goods appear very cheap compared to wages because the price of anything else (such as a meal or cup of coffee) is high due to local labour prices.
As for the solution move north asap before the latest set of house price inflation impacts the areas it hasn't hit yet.
If house prices go down, the pressure will be on build costs.
* direct costs on working age people via taxation
* A shortage of workers that increases costs to business and encourages/requires immigration
* immigration plus old people remaining in family homes creates a housing shortage
* higher taxes and housing costs encourages emigration of mobile and higher skilled workers, increasing tax burden on those remaining.
Policy failures include regulatory impediments to housing supply, self defeating austerity policies that shrank the economy, and failure to raise the pension age sufficiently and to improve public health. Plus Brexit that has added to business costs and reduced tax revenue (also made it harder for retirees to move overseas). Ultimately, we have to realise that ageing poses an existential threat to our way of life that requires a complete rethink of our lifestyles, the welfare state, everything. We simply cannot afford to support increasing numbers of elderly people living in poor health - younger workers won't take it. This isn't an attack on old people - a group I love and respect and who I will be a member of sooner than I'd like to think. It's just arithmetic.
Most employees tend to reflect their boss and the organisation culture he/she creates, and private and public clients mustn't reward leaders who model the wrong ones.
Just invigorated when I see stuff like the crap Horsey boy posts. Sure are some serious f**knuggets on here, they woudl make Marie Antoinette seem like a peasant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoist_with_his_own_petard