I think that what frustrates me about the Tory approach to every one of these issues is that they have *no policy* to address *any* issues. HUYFD is a great touchstone for this: every concern is met by a response that it isn't actually a problem and everything will be fine, on the basis that no single thing affects more than 50% of people (and those it does affect are unlikely to vote Tory anyway).
That's no way to govern. And totally unlike the Tory party I once supported.
And as noted above, completely unlike Thatcher.
Who I remain a great fan of, even as I understand that many of her reforms didn’t succeed on her own terms.
Thatcher was more a classical Liberal than traditional patrician Tory, even if obviously not a statist Socialist either
I just spent a few minutes reading some of the last thread (not realising I wasn’t on the last page) before noticing there was a new one.
The free flowing meanders of an afternoon of PB are fascinating. Page 2 was full of fierce and tenacious trans related debate (without, as someone commented, anyone actually trans on the forum, something I think is badly missed because it makes the debates very hypothetical).
Page 6 was best pubs. I don’t have a favourite. Used to, should do now (I’d love if to be the Duck in Pett Bottom near the vineyard but it’s not) but don’t.
Now we’re on to polls. Last night I was - rightly - being derided for an overly precious reaction to being interrogated at Copenhagen passport control. Tonight I’m at peace (ish) with Brexit as I tuck into a bit of seafood at an extremely touristy spot in Nyhavn.
I find it fascinating (not the subject, the process) of how people can endlessly debate "trans" without the discussion ever going anywhere and it being about 84th on anyone's list of the most important issues facing the country.
I presume because it's about values and identity and so it never ends.
By contrast I find it beyond tedious. It's the same posters repeating the same points endlessly across each other, on almost every thread. Marking all posts with a large T so that we can swiftly ignore is a jolly good idea.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
I just spent a few minutes reading some of the last thread (not realising I wasn’t on the last page) before noticing there was a new one.
The free flowing meanders of an afternoon of PB are fascinating. Page 2 was full of fierce and tenacious trans related debate (without, as someone commented, anyone actually trans on the forum, something I think is badly missed because it makes the debates very hypothetical).
Page 6 was best pubs. I don’t have a favourite. Used to, should do now (I’d love if to be the Duck in Pett Bottom near the vineyard but it’s not) but don’t.
Now we’re on to polls. Last night I was - rightly - being derided for an overly precious reaction to being interrogated at Copenhagen passport control. Tonight I’m at peace (ish) with Brexit as I tuck into a bit of seafood at an extremely touristy spot in Nyhavn.
I find it fascinating (not the subject, the process) of how people can endlessly debate "trans" without the discussion ever going anywhere and it being about 84th on anyone's list of the most important issues facing the country.
I presume because it's about values and identity and so it never ends.
By contrast I find it beyond tedious. It's the same posters repeating the same points endlessly across each other, on almost every thread. Marking all posts with a large T so that we can swiftly ignore is a jolly good idea.
There always some posters to skip straight past, but Trans has certainly upped the percent in that category.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
He can't. It's pretty much established that Braverman wants to stop the boats more than the rest of Sunak's piss poor decline-managers. Moving her on is essentially admitting defeat on boats, and it (and she) would unleash ten tonnes of cow pat on to him, precipitating his exit. Unless she commits a new and serious misdemeanor, she stays.
Looking at the evidence, I don't think we can stop the boats by, er, stopping the boats. The French have little real interest in stopping the people smugglers as it reduces pressure on their own asylum process and on policing the migrants near their coast. Once they are afloat and in our half of the channel then, on safety grounds alone, we have to let people land.
For the umptieth time, we can only stop illegal migration by stopping the pull factor - we must make it easy for illegal immigrants to shop those who employ them (and give them fast track right to stay if they do so) and have massive criminal penalties for the owners and managers caught doing so.
Yes, but they don't work illegally from the boats, they claim asylum.
Understood. If they come in illegally on the boats then they should not be allowed to claim asylum. And yes I know we then have a problem because France won't let us send them back across the channel.
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
I just spent a few minutes reading some of the last thread (not realising I wasn’t on the last page) before noticing there was a new one.
The free flowing meanders of an afternoon of PB are fascinating. Page 2 was full of fierce and tenacious trans related debate (without, as someone commented, anyone actually trans on the forum, something I think is badly missed because it makes the debates very hypothetical).
Page 6 was best pubs. I don’t have a favourite. Used to, should do now (I’d love if to be the Duck in Pett Bottom near the vineyard but it’s not) but don’t.
Now we’re on to polls. Last night I was - rightly - being derided for an overly precious reaction to being interrogated at Copenhagen passport control. Tonight I’m at peace (ish) with Brexit as I tuck into a bit of seafood at an extremely touristy spot in Nyhavn.
I find it fascinating (not the subject, the process) of how people can endlessly debate "trans" without the discussion ever going anywhere and it being about 84th on anyone's list of the most important issues facing the country.
I presume because it's about values and identity and so it never ends.
It must be a proxy for something important, like: Who is in charge of the progressive movement. Maybe it is the moment for a split between the liberal Progressive Front and the woke Front for Progress.
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
I agree. The only thing I will credit Sunak with is realising this, and that he cannot give in to strikes. I think otherwise, every time he has backed away from the fights he needed to have, and engaged in those he oughtn't to have. The press and wider public generally overestimate the power of a precarious new administration in which some members can literally not know where the lavs are.
Truss' mistake was familiarity, I think, rather than naivety, with Whitehall. The knew what the levers were and so pushed them quicker. Too quickly. A real shame, because her pro growth policies actually had a chance of changing the fortunes of the nation relatively swiftly.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
He can't. It's pretty much established that Braverman wants to stop the boats more than the rest of Sunak's piss poor decline-managers. Moving her on is essentially admitting defeat on boats, and it (and she) would unleash ten tonnes of cow pat on to him, precipitating his exit. Unless she commits a new and serious misdemeanor, she stays.
Looking at the evidence, I don't think we can stop the boats by, er, stopping the boats. The French have little real interest in stopping the people smugglers as it reduces pressure on their own asylum process and on policing the migrants near their coast. Once they are afloat and in our half of the channel then, on safety grounds alone, we have to let people land.
For the umptieth time, we can only stop illegal migration by stopping the pull factor - we must make it easy for illegal immigrants to shop those who employ them (and give them fast track right to stay if they do so) and have massive criminal penalties for the owners and managers caught doing so.
Yes, but they don't work illegally from the boats, they claim asylum.
Understood. If they come in illegally on the boats then they should not be allowed to claim asylum. And yes I know we then have a problem because France won't let us send them back across the channel.
Yes, but there are very few ways to claim asylum without entering the country first. If you ban illegal migrants from gaining asylum you effectively end asylum.
I hope you had a good strike day. Accomplish anything?
A lot of sleep. I am not a member of the striking Union so technically wasn't. The school was closed but they wanted everyone in, including supply, for somewhat mysterious reasons. I told them I needed a "personal mental health day" (I really did, the past week has been brutal with assaults on pretty much all my colleagues), and would rather take it today than when the kids were in. I thought I was doing them a favour since they could avoid paying me. Instead they seemed pissed off. I suspect they had some busywork motivation bollocks planned.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
I just spent a few minutes reading some of the last thread (not realising I wasn’t on the last page) before noticing there was a new one.
The free flowing meanders of an afternoon of PB are fascinating. Page 2 was full of fierce and tenacious trans related debate (without, as someone commented, anyone actually trans on the forum, something I think is badly missed because it makes the debates very hypothetical).
Page 6 was best pubs. I don’t have a favourite. Used to, should do now (I’d love if to be the Duck in Pett Bottom near the vineyard but it’s not) but don’t.
Now we’re on to polls. Last night I was - rightly - being derided for an overly precious reaction to being interrogated at Copenhagen passport control. Tonight I’m at peace (ish) with Brexit as I tuck into a bit of seafood at an extremely touristy spot in Nyhavn.
There used to be an openly trans poster on here - probably about five years back. I think one or two posters are still in contact with him. From memory, his views were sometimes not exactly what you might expect (and that is one of the glorious things about PB).
I remember that person. Posted as a bloke for quite a few years then put up an actual photo and explained about transitioning and then quietly vanished as many trans people do.
Ooh I don't remember that. So it was either during one of my lengthy periods away or the whole subject is of such little interest to me, I was here, but just missed the whole affair.
It was quite a while ago. Sometime pre-Brexit I think.
I turned off in 2012 only to return in 2017. The Tories were in the ascent and there was lots of enthusiastic cheerleading. Where did it all go wrong?
We are now 13 years into Tory Government. Only one government since universal suffrage has won a general election after 10 consecutive years of their party in power, the Tories in 1992.
What do you expect in a democracy?
At risk of being picky, Labour won the general election of February 1950 having been in power since May 1940 (with a two month break in 1945).
The PM was Tory from 1940 to 1945 with the Tories having far more seats than Labour.
Labour were only in government as were the Liberals because of the War, the Conservatives had a majority
Yes, but they were still 'in power.'
I mean, the Tories were only in government from 2010 to 2015 because of the Liberal Democrats, but it didn't mean they weren't 'in power.'
Your argument is the more bizarre because I'd left you two loopholes - I even obligingly emphasised one of them for you - which you could have quite justifiably used to reject my example on a technicality but you overlooked entirely.
The Tories had comfortably most seats from 2010 to 2015 and the PM.
Labour did not have the PM from 1940 and 1945 and the Tories had a majority of MPs, it was a completely different scenario. Without WW2 Labour would not have been in government
So you overlook the three months short of ten years and the brief break in favour of rewriting history in a scenario so wildly implausible that you look a fool for even suggesting it.
If you come on here to practice your debating skills, my advice would be you need some lessons first.
My rates are very reasonable if you want to contact me...
This is an excellent piece on the moral ambition behind Thatcherism and how it has utterly failed, creating a class of self-entitled boomers who, on average, take far more than they ever put into the system.
It also suggests the Tories are fucked for some time, and that we are on the eve of a great change, equivalent to 1945 and 1979.
I think I agree with all of it.
The problem the Tories have is not enough popular capitalism, not too much.
In 1979 they stood up against vested interests to allow young people to buy their own homes - and hence won the youth vote - and today they defend vested interests whilst young people are priced out of the market, and they've whacked them with tuition fees on top, effectively a massive tax increase.
That's the problem. Tory vote and home ownership is strongly correlated, and always has been. I don't think this is anything new. Capitalism works when it's spread far and wide.
Yes, young people today have slightly different values - as every consecutive generation does - but there's not a tide of socialism sweeping over them.
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Eh? I thought she just fucked up and got sacked by Truss, and was reinstated by Sunak? She maybe fucked up again, I lose track.
As for timidity, Sunak certainly has excellent personal publicity, coming out of all this as some sort of John Major/Dennis Thatcher figure, nice guy, but hen-pecked by his awful party. He was the one that had Gavin Williamson as his campaign manager and put him at the heart of his team; he was the one that appointed Zahawi.
I just spent a few minutes reading some of the last thread (not realising I wasn’t on the last page) before noticing there was a new one.
The free flowing meanders of an afternoon of PB are fascinating. Page 2 was full of fierce and tenacious trans related debate (without, as someone commented, anyone actually trans on the forum, something I think is badly missed because it makes the debates very hypothetical).
Page 6 was best pubs. I don’t have a favourite. Used to, should do now (I’d love if to be the Duck in Pett Bottom near the vineyard but it’s not) but don’t.
Now we’re on to polls. Last night I was - rightly - being derided for an overly precious reaction to being interrogated at Copenhagen passport control. Tonight I’m at peace (ish) with Brexit as I tuck into a bit of seafood at an extremely touristy spot in Nyhavn.
There used to be an openly trans poster on here - probably about five years back. I think one or two posters are still in contact with him. From memory, his views were sometimes not exactly what you might expect (and that is one of the glorious things about PB).
I am in touch. Much missed on here - by me anyway. One of my favourite people on Twitter.
My favourite pub is the Sir Robert Peel. It is a proper old fashioned city pub, with wood panelling, open fires, pub dog, decent beer, booths of various sizes and a great landlady. Food is limited, but I recommend the soup of the day:
I hope you had a good strike day. Accomplish anything?
A lot of sleep. I am not a member of the striking Union so technically wasn't. The school was closed but they wanted everyone in, including supply, for somewhat mysterious reasons. I told them I needed a "personal mental health day" (I really did, the past week has been brutal with assaults on pretty much all my colleagues), and would rather take it today than when the kids were in. I thought I was doing them a favour since they could avoid paying me. Instead they seemed pissed off. I suspect they had some busywork motivation bollocks planned.
One thing that unions do need to focus on is the ridiculous creep of directed time. They had managed to clamp down on it but it seems to be making a comeback.
I visited a school in Telford in 2018 where they had so many directed hours of meeting and training that they had no time to mark any work. What's the point of that?
I've just tracked down the YouGov tables for its "new" poll - to be fair, the fieldwork is from this time last week so it's already ancient history.
The England VI numbers are Labour 47, Conservative 27 which would be a 16.5% from Conservative to Labour. That mirrors the swing in the key 65+ age group which the Conservatives still lead 45-29 but that is a 16.5% swing to Labour from 2019.
The swing among 2016 Remain voters is just 7.5% with the Conservatives third behind the LDs. Among the Leavers it's still 46-28 to the Conservatives but that's a 20% swing to Labour.
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Sunak needed to display the brutality of power that Johnson did, and cull all the cabinet he didn't like, shortly to be followed by culling the backbenchers who oppose him.
He didn't, so his cabinet is a mixed bag of loonies, time servers owed favours and incompetents, sometimes all 3 combined.
This is an excellent piece on the moral ambition behind Thatcherism and how it has utterly failed, creating a class of self-entitled boomers who, on average, take far more than they ever put into the system.
It also suggests the Tories are fucked for some time, and that we are on the eve of a great change, equivalent to 1945 and 1979.
I think I agree with all of it.
The problem the Tories have is not enough popular capitalism, not too much.
In 1979 they stood up against vested interests to allow young people to buy their own homes - and hence won the youth vote - and today they defend vested interests whilst young people are priced out of the market, and they've whacked them with tuition fees on top, effectively a massive tax increase.
That's the problem. Tory vote and home ownership is strongly correlated, and always has been. I don't think this is anything new. Capitalism works when it's spread far and wide.
Yes, young people today have slightly different values - as every consecutive generation does - but there's not a tide of socialism sweeping over them.
The Tories won a landslide in 2019 winning most voters over 39, the age most own their first property is now 39.
It is not home ownership putting Starmer ahead, indeed controlling immigration is just as important as building new homes to get more young people on the housing ladder anyway
My favourite pub is the Sir Robert Peel. It is a proper old fashioned city pub, with wood panelling, open fires, pub dog, decent beer, booths of various sizes and a great landlady. Food is limited, but I recommend the soup of the day:
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
Why Braverman? I know you hate her because she’s a right wing HS, but electorally she is on the button. She has told the Tories that if they don’t stop the boats they are FUCKED. And she is damn right
I reckon the Tories are doomed whatever they do, but if they stop the boats they can prevent a bad defeat becoming an apocalyptic rout
The Tories almost certainly can't stop the boats.
I suspect the only way under our current legal paradigm, and the tangled web of laws, charters and obligations we've got internationally, to stop the boats is to allow everyone over here a ride who wants them so they don't need to launch a boat- and hence they end.
Of course, the net result would be a massive increase in immigration.
The only alternative to actually "stop the boats" - which would mean stopping the boats and the migration - would be to reopen decades of international law and UN charters and the legal industries that surround them to requalify refugee and asylum definitions, which would probably take years, and then to forcefully police it. Which we can't do alone.
I've just tracked down the YouGov tables for its "new" poll - to be fair, the fieldwork is from this time last week so it's already ancient history.
The England VI numbers are Labour 47, Conservative 27 which would be a 16.5% from Conservative to Labour. That mirrors the swing in the key 65+ age group which the Conservatives still lead 45-29 but that is a 16.5% swing to Labour from 2019.
The swing among 2016 Remain voters is just 7.5% with the Conservatives third behind the LDs. Among the Leavers it's still 46-28 to the Conservatives but that's a 20% swing to Labour.
Yes Sunak isn't doing much worse than Boris in 2019 with Remainers, yet Rishi is doing far worse with Leavers than Boris, especially leaking to RefUK
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Pensioners get a holiday every week and one of the best payrises in the nation.
Although it would be hard to argue that the state pension allows a champagne lifestyle. An increase of 10% on not a lot, is a bit more, but still not a lot.
I just spent a few minutes reading some of the last thread (not realising I wasn’t on the last page) before noticing there was a new one.
The free flowing meanders of an afternoon of PB are fascinating. Page 2 was full of fierce and tenacious trans related debate (without, as someone commented, anyone actually trans on the forum, something I think is badly missed because it makes the debates very hypothetical).
Page 6 was best pubs. I don’t have a favourite. Used to, should do now (I’d love if to be the Duck in Pett Bottom near the vineyard but it’s not) but don’t.
Now we’re on to polls. Last night I was - rightly - being derided for an overly precious reaction to being interrogated at Copenhagen passport control. Tonight I’m at peace (ish) with Brexit as I tuck into a bit of seafood at an extremely touristy spot in Nyhavn.
I find it fascinating (not the subject, the process) of how people can endlessly debate "trans" without the discussion ever going anywhere and it being about 84th on anyone's list of the most important issues facing the country.
I presume because it's about values and identity and so it never ends.
It must be a proxy for something important, like: Who is in charge of the progressive movement. Maybe it is the moment for a split between the liberal Progressive Front and the woke Front for Progress.
By the same token, for what is the repetitive turgid debate on the reactionary side a proxy? On the unlikely basis that any of them can currently organise a pissup in a brewery, who's going to come out on top of that one? My money's on J.K.Rowling and her flying monkeys..
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Sunak needed to display the brutality of power that Johnson did, and cull all the cabinet he didn't like, shortly to be followed by culling the backbenchers who oppose him.
He didn't, so his cabinet is a mixed bag of loonies, time servers owed favours and incompetents.
Unlike in 2019, it isn't 20 odd people who disagree with him.
C. 100 Tory backbenchers probably think the state is too big (the blue wall)
C. 75 Tory backbenchers think the state is too small (the levelling uppers)
C. 25 Tory backbenchers won't be continuing past the next GE
There is too high a risk of being ousted by either side. Sunak seems to think by becoming a do nothing uncontroversial govt he might make it through. Johnson's political nous was to realise that the 100 blue wallers could be bought off in one way, and the 75 levelling uppers in another, cancelling each other out. If he hadn't have sacked Cummings I think he'd still be bestriding British politics, as Tim Shipman said, 'like a Giant toad'....
This is an excellent piece on the moral ambition behind Thatcherism and how it has utterly failed, creating a class of self-entitled boomers who, on average, take far more than they ever put into the system.
It also suggests the Tories are fucked for some time, and that we are on the eve of a great change, equivalent to 1945 and 1979.
I think I agree with all of it.
It is an article which ignores the fact most pensioners did not grow up wealthy, have created wealth and assets for their children and grandchildren, paid into the system all their lives despite never having had the opportunity to go to university much more of today's generation did, were more family oriented and generally do a lot for the community and voluntary work.
It is an article written by a libertarian with little interest in family or the wider community
That generation (which includes my parents, who did not go to university) had - broadly speaking - the advantage of a rapidly growing economy, a generous welfare state, cheaper housing, and increasing class mobility.
Lucky them.
Unfortunately, they have hoarded their assets and economic growth has slowed. Their children, unless they inherit (and note the statistic in there about who benefits from inheritance) are being given no hope.
They will not stand for it, and their time is coming.
The average young person will inherit though, as the average parent and grandparent is a home owner. The may inherit more in London and the Home counties but house prices are highest there anyway
They'll inherit after they retire. What good is that?
No they will inherit from grandparents in their late 20s and 30s, which helps with a deposit. They may well then inherit from their parents in their 60s too to get a bigger property
Does this happen in 21st Century Britain, or in Postman Pat's Greendale?
It happens all over the country. Certainly in the South (housing more affordable North of the Watford Gap anyway)
Does it? Or is that what has happened to you? Are you assuming it happens to everyone else? Because it doesn't. I'm 68. My grandparents are dead but I didn't inherit anything from them. My dad is still alive so I have inherited nothing so far. And when I do l won't need it, because I am making my own way in life and I'm 10 times more wealthy than my parents through my own efforts and not by scrounging off them. Happy for them to spend every penny they have and not give it to me.
It is very sad that you think it is ok to wait for parents to die.
I just spent a few minutes reading some of the last thread (not realising I wasn’t on the last page) before noticing there was a new one.
The free flowing meanders of an afternoon of PB are fascinating. Page 2 was full of fierce and tenacious trans related debate (without, as someone commented, anyone actually trans on the forum, something I think is badly missed because it makes the debates very hypothetical).
Page 6 was best pubs. I don’t have a favourite. Used to, should do now (I’d love if to be the Duck in Pett Bottom near the vineyard but it’s not) but don’t.
Now we’re on to polls. Last night I was - rightly - being derided for an overly precious reaction to being interrogated at Copenhagen passport control. Tonight I’m at peace (ish) with Brexit as I tuck into a bit of seafood at an extremely touristy spot in Nyhavn.
There used to be an openly trans poster on here - probably about five years back. I think one or two posters are still in contact with him. From memory, his views were sometimes not exactly what you might expect (and that is one of the glorious things about PB).
I remember that person. Posted as a bloke for quite a few years then put up an actual photo and explained about transitioning and then quietly vanished as many trans people do.
Ooh I don't remember that. So it was either during one of my lengthy periods away or the whole subject is of such little interest to me, I was here, but just missed the whole affair.
It was quite a while ago. Sometime pre-Brexit I think.
I turned off in 2012 only to return in 2017. The Tories were in the ascent and there was lots of enthusiastic cheerleading. Where did it all go wrong?
We are now 13 years into Tory Government. Only one government since universal suffrage has won a general election after 10 consecutive years of their party in power, the Tories in 1992.
What do you expect in a democracy?
At risk of being picky, Labour won the general election of February 1950 having been in power since May 1940 (with a two month break in 1945).
The PM was Tory from 1940 to 1945 with the Tories having far more seats than Labour.
Labour were only in government as were the Liberals because of the War, the Conservatives had a majority
Yes, but they were still 'in power.'
I mean, the Tories were only in government from 2010 to 2015 because of the Liberal Democrats, but it didn't mean they weren't 'in power.'
Your argument is the more bizarre because I'd left you two loopholes - I even obligingly emphasised one of them for you - which you could have quite justifiably used to reject my example on a technicality but you overlooked entirely.
The Tories had comfortably most seats from 2010 to 2015 and the PM.
Labour did not have the PM from 1940 and 1945 and the Tories had a majority of MPs, it was a completely different scenario. Without WW2 Labour would not have been in government
So you overlook the three months short of ten years and the brief break in favour of rewriting history in a scenario so wildly implausible that you look a fool for even suggesting it.
If you come on here to practice your debating skills, my advice would be you need some lessons first.
My rates are very reasonable if you want to contact me...
If you really want to be pedantic I will say only one other government has won majorities or most seats while being in government for more than 10 consecutive years since universal suffrage then. Major's Tories
On topic, how do current polls compare with those in the run up to the 1997 election in this regard? My recollection is that Labour's 1997 success relied as much on Tory voters sitting on their hands as direct switchers from Tory to Labour, but I'd be very interested in seeing the numbers.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
Why Braverman? I know you hate her because she’s a right wing HS, but electorally she is on the button. She has told the Tories that if they don’t stop the boats they are FUCKED. And she is damn right
She broke the ministerial code, so she should not be a minister.
And as she is a minister, her job is to STOP THE BOATS.
By your own standard, she is useless.
Why keep her in post?
Well then sure, in that case
But is there any potential replacement who is MORE likely to stop the boats? Can’t see it. Braverman will probably fail as well, but at least she looks determined, and she is unruffled by Woke critiques
I read some persuasive analysis today which said that a lot of the disillusionment with Brexit (and, hence, the Tories) is because of the lamentable failure on immigration. Many Brexit voters voted to take back control of the borders. The Tories promised to do this. Instead we have record immigration AND the Dinghy People.
So the Brexiteers who were mainly concerned with migration (eg in the Red Wall) have rightly deserted the Tories - and Brexit. The sovereigntist liberal leavers, like me, are still fine with Brexit, I never cared about Polish plumbers anyway (tho I respect the votes of those that do)
The analysis further reckoned that much of this sentiment is hidden because people are reluctant to admit to misgivings about migration and asylum seekers etc. My hunch is: this is right
TLDR: Tories are gonna lose bad. They have already failed on migration
The cynical part of me expects an them to shift checks from lorries to boats - reducing the headline boat figure in the hope that the press goes with that as the headline rather than '20 dead found in back of frozen food truck'.
It's a fair point, virtually no-one gets onto Le Shuttle or through the Eurotunnel anymore and far fewer sneak onto lorries with all the new infrared technology and the massive fines now in place.
It's just the optics of boat infiltrations are fucking awful- about 10 times worse - as they're an obvious breach of a secure border, very clearly exploited by gangs and it makes our legal impotence and loopholes so bloody obvious, and a mockery of 'control'
And, because the punters know this - that it's all piss and wind and we can't do anything about it - demand will continue to grow and grow until the boat crossings exceed all previous records.
They must be stopped. But they probably can't be stopped.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
Used to be and I think that's now largely gone, except on TV weirdly.
Whilst we are still talking about pubs, I’m trying to find out the name of my favourite terrible/great pub. Was near to UCL and very convenient (or so I thought) because we used to enjoy many lock-ins there. Was an absolute shithole and the manager was this scary Krays film type extra with a bald head and one arm who wasn’t particularly welcoming but it was guaranteed you could drink there until the morning. The heavy curtains would come across at closing and we even had our escape route out the back planned out.
All this time I thought it was the “Lord Rodney’s Head” but having googled it that seems to be in Whitechapel and don’t think we would be arsed - would have sworn it was in backstreets round Euston/Kings X. Would be delighted if anyone else had the dubious pleasure and frankly the name of the pub.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Pensioners get a holiday every week and one of the best payrises in the nation.
Although it would be hard to argue that the state pension allows a champagne lifestyle. An increase of 10% on not a lot, is a bit more, but still not a lot.
The country spends £110 billion on the state pension, so the rise costs £11 billion, and adds to inflationary pressures. A lower rise and an equal one for public sector workers would have been better.
On topic, how do current polls compare with those in the run up to the 1997 election in this regard? My recollection is that Labour's 1997 success relied as much on Tory voters sitting on their hands as direct switchers from Tory to Labour, but I'd be very interested in seeing the numbers.
There are some numbers upthread I think; from memory Major's 14 million from 1992 lost about 2 million to Labour and 2 million to EastEnders.
What would be really interesting would be the small print from opinion polls in 1995ish.
On topic, how do current polls compare with those in the run up to the 1997 election in this regard? My recollection is that Labour's 1997 success relied as much on Tory voters sitting on their hands as direct switchers from Tory to Labour, but I'd be very interested in seeing the numbers.
We tend to see the electorate in terms of those who always vote and those who rarely do, but there is a third group who only bother if they feel there’s a good reason to. It’s been proven that being canvassed pushes up the likelihood of voting significantly (hence don’t canvass the opposition!) and this only works because of the maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’ts.
This is an excellent piece on the moral ambition behind Thatcherism and how it has utterly failed, creating a class of self-entitled boomers who, on average, take far more than they ever put into the system.
It also suggests the Tories are fucked for some time, and that we are on the eve of a great change, equivalent to 1945 and 1979.
I think I agree with all of it.
It is an article which ignores the fact most pensioners did not grow up wealthy, have created wealth and assets for their children and grandchildren, paid into the system all their lives despite never having had the opportunity to go to university much more of today's generation did, were more family oriented and generally do a lot for the community and voluntary work.
It is an article written by a libertarian with little interest in family or the wider community
That generation (which includes my parents, who did not go to university) had - broadly speaking - the advantage of a rapidly growing economy, a generous welfare state, cheaper housing, and increasing class mobility.
Lucky them.
Unfortunately, they have hoarded their assets and economic growth has slowed. Their children, unless they inherit (and note the statistic in there about who benefits from inheritance) are being given no hope.
They will not stand for it, and their time is coming.
The average young person will inherit though, as the average parent and grandparent is a home owner. The may inherit more in London and the Home counties but house prices are highest there anyway
They'll inherit after they retire. What good is that?
No they will inherit from grandparents in their late 20s and 30s, which helps with a deposit. They may well then inherit from their parents in their 60s too to get a bigger property
Does this happen in 21st Century Britain, or in Postman Pat's Greendale?
It happens all over the country. Certainly in the South (housing more affordable North of the Watford Gap anyway)
Does it? Or is that what has happened to you? Are you assuming it happens to everyone else? Because it doesn't. I'm 68. My grandparents are dead but I didn't inherit anything from them. My dad is still alive so I have inherited nothing so far. And when I do l won't need it, because I am making my own way in life and I'm 10 times more wealthy than my parents through my own efforts and not by scrounging off them. Happy for them to spend every penny they have and not give it to me.
It is very sad that you think it is ok to wait for parents to die.
Well I inherited something from at least one set of grandparents to help with a deposit as did most of my generation I know (others got parental help with deposits too). In the home counties and posher parts of London that is the norm now.
You were a high earner, most people aren't. In London and the Home counties you could work 24/7 on an average salary and still not have enough to buy a house.
Only north of the Watford Gap can you afford to buy on an average salary with no assistance.
I am a Tory too you are a Liberal, inherited wealth has always been a key Tory value
This is an excellent piece on the moral ambition behind Thatcherism and how it has utterly failed, creating a class of self-entitled boomers who, on average, take far more than they ever put into the system.
It also suggests the Tories are fucked for some time, and that we are on the eve of a great change, equivalent to 1945 and 1979.
I think I agree with all of it.
I disagree. Most people today are better off than they were (or would have been) 50 years ago. That's the test. Not whether people are slightly less well-off than they thought they were 10 years ago [but probably weren't really, because it was based on having a lot of credit cards].
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
He can't. It's pretty much established that Braverman wants to stop the boats more than the rest of Sunak's piss poor decline-managers. Moving her on is essentially admitting defeat on boats, and it (and she) would unleash ten tonnes of cow pat on to him, precipitating his exit. Unless she commits a new and serious misdemeanor, she stays.
Looking at the evidence, I don't think we can stop the boats by, er, stopping the boats. The French have little real interest in stopping the people smugglers as it reduces pressure on their own asylum process and on policing the migrants near their coast. Once they are afloat and in our half of the channel then, on safety grounds alone, we have to let people land.
For the umptieth time, we can only stop illegal migration by stopping the pull factor - we must make it easy for illegal immigrants to shop those who employ them (and give them fast track right to stay if they do so) and have massive criminal penalties for the owners and managers caught doing so.
Yes, but they don't work illegally from the boats, they claim asylum.
Understood. If they come in illegally on the boats then they should not be allowed to claim asylum. And yes I know we then have a problem because France won't let us send them back across the channel.
Yes, but there are very few ways to claim asylum without entering the country first. If you ban illegal migrants from gaining asylum you effectively end asylum.
I think this is where the solution will end.
The only grounds for claiming asylum "on shore" will be that you were fleeing for your life and you had no alternative or choice before getting here, and you'd have to evidence that.
Otherwise, 48-72 hours detention and next plane back.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
Why Braverman? I know you hate her because she’s a right wing HS, but electorally she is on the button. She has told the Tories that if they don’t stop the boats they are FUCKED. And she is damn right
I reckon the Tories are doomed whatever they do, but if they stop the boats they can prevent a bad defeat becoming an apocalyptic rout
The Tories almost certainly can't stop the boats.
I suspect the only way under our current legal paradigm, and the tangled web of laws, charters and obligations we've got internationally, to stop the boats is to allow everyone over here a ride who wants them so they don't need to launch a boat- and hence they end.
Of course, the net result would be a massive increase in immigration.
The only alternative to actually "stop the boats" - which would mean stopping the boats and the migration - would be to reopen decades of international law and UN charters and the legal industries that surround them to requalify refugee and asylum definitions, which would probably take years, and then to forcefully police it. Which we can't do alone.
You really have no idea do you? They have already got 'a ride' if they want one - return flights to Albania are £23 at the moment.
Why would anyone pay hundreds to a sleazy trafficker to come over on a leaky dinghy? Because they don't want to go through passport control and show up on a database is why.
The way to actually stop the boats is to end the pull factors - sort out benefit entitlements, process claims at a speed of higher than a few a week, declare Albania a safe country and send people straight back, amend May's dreadful modern slavery law which is providing a bullet-proof self-fulfilling asylum claim justification - essentially a GRC for asylum claimants. These aren't hard things to do, and they are already the case in other countries including full EU members.
I do like you n all but would you stop being so PATHETIC please, what sort of Conservative are you?
On topic, how do current polls compare with those in the run up to the 1997 election in this regard? My recollection is that Labour's 1997 success relied as much on Tory voters sitting on their hands as direct switchers from Tory to Labour, but I'd be very interested in seeing the numbers.
There are some numbers upthread I think; from memory Major's 14 million from 1992 lost about 2 million to Labour and 2 million to EastEnders.
What would be really interesting would be the small print from opinion polls in 1995ish.
That's interesting. 2/14 (Con to Lab) is 14% which isn't much different from the 12% seen here. Obviously we are looking at a midterm poll not an exit poll here though.
I saw a patient yesterday who had just got Leave to Remain. It took 6 years for him to prove that his life was in danger in a Middle Eastern country. He has done well with his English. When I first saw him 5 years ago he barely spoke a word, now fluent.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
I would like to see how they got the 1.2 million figure,
by my reckoning its far too high using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
If Albanians are a big chunk of the people arriving on boats then a solution presents itself: open up tens of thousands of working visas for Albanian nationals for public sector jobs where there are acute shortages, in exchange for unfettered access to housing, health and social care to retired Brits who’d like to live out their final days in sunny unspoilt Mediterranean Albania.
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Sunak needed to display the brutality of power that Johnson did, and cull all the cabinet he didn't like, shortly to be followed by culling the backbenchers who oppose him.
He didn't, so his cabinet is a mixed bag of loonies, time servers owed favours and incompetents.
Unlike in 2019, it isn't 20 odd people who disagree with him.
C. 100 Tory backbenchers probably think the state is too big (the blue wall)
C. 75 Tory backbenchers think the state is too small (the levelling uppers)
C. 25 Tory backbenchers won't be continuing past the next GE
There is too high a risk of being ousted by either side. Sunak seems to think by becoming a do nothing uncontroversial govt he might make it through. Johnson's political nous was to realise that the 100 blue wallers could be bought off in one way, and the 75 levelling uppers in another, cancelling each other out. If he hadn't have sacked Cummings I think he'd still be bestriding British politics, as Tim Shipman said, 'like a Giant toad'....
Hi Mortimer, good to see you posting.
Yesterday you said: "Brexit makes my business life inordinately easier than it would be if we were still in the EU."
I was genuinely interested in how and why that is since as far as I can see every other business is seeing Brexit as neutral or negative.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
He can't. It's pretty much established that Braverman wants to stop the boats more than the rest of Sunak's piss poor decline-managers. Moving her on is essentially admitting defeat on boats, and it (and she) would unleash ten tonnes of cow pat on to him, precipitating his exit. Unless she commits a new and serious misdemeanor, she stays.
Looking at the evidence, I don't think we can stop the boats by, er, stopping the boats. The French have little real interest in stopping the people smugglers as it reduces pressure on their own asylum process and on policing the migrants near their coast. Once they are afloat and in our half of the channel then, on safety grounds alone, we have to let people land.
For the umptieth time, we can only stop illegal migration by stopping the pull factor - we must make it easy for illegal immigrants to shop those who employ them (and give them fast track right to stay if they do so) and have massive criminal penalties for the owners and managers caught doing so.
Yes, but they don't work illegally from the boats, they claim asylum.
Understood. If they come in illegally on the boats then they should not be allowed to claim asylum. And yes I know we then have a problem because France won't let us send them back across the channel.
Yes, but there are very few ways to claim asylum without entering the country first. If you ban illegal migrants from gaining asylum you effectively end asylum.
I think this is where the solution will end.
The only grounds for claiming asylum "on shore" will be that you were fleeing for your life and you had no alternative or choice before getting here, and you'd have to evidence that.
Otherwise, 48-72 hours detention and next plane back.
I think the only way to stop arrivals is to withdraw from the Refugee Convention and recognise no one as an asylum seeker.
I saw a patient yesterday who had just got Leave to Remain. It took 6 years for him to prove that his life was in danger in a Middle Eastern country. He has done well with his English. When I first saw him 5 years ago he barely spoke a word, now fluent.
“Leave to remain” could be a good header for a thread on Brexit opinion polls.
If Albanians are a big chunk of the people arriving on boats then a solution presents itself: open up tens of thousands of working visas for Albanian nationals for public sector jobs where there are acute shortages, in exchange for unfettered access to housing, health and social care to retired Brits who’d like to live out their final days in sunny unspoilt Mediterranean Albania.
Dear Lord, do you really think they're coming here because they have a burning desire to be hospital porters in Hemel Hempstead? If so, can you explain why they're not just coming on a plane from Tirana for £23?
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Look on the bright side . . . Everton managed to successfully complete Dry January.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
Why Braverman? I know you hate her because she’s a right wing HS, but electorally she is on the button. She has told the Tories that if they don’t stop the boats they are FUCKED. And she is damn right
I reckon the Tories are doomed whatever they do, but if they stop the boats they can prevent a bad defeat becoming an apocalyptic rout
The Tories almost certainly can't stop the boats.
I suspect the only way under our current legal paradigm, and the tangled web of laws, charters and obligations we've got internationally, to stop the boats is to allow everyone over here a ride who wants them so they don't need to launch a boat- and hence they end.
Of course, the net result would be a massive increase in immigration.
The only alternative to actually "stop the boats" - which would mean stopping the boats and the migration - would be to reopen decades of international law and UN charters and the legal industries that surround them to requalify refugee and asylum definitions, which would probably take years, and then to forcefully police it. Which we can't do alone.
You really have no idea do you? They have already got 'a ride' if they want one - return flights to Albania are £23 at the moment.
Why would anyone pay hundreds to a sleazy trafficker to come over on a leaky dinghy? Because they don't want to go through passport control and show up on a database is why.
The way to actually stop the boats is to end the pull factors - sort out benefit entitlements, process claims at a speed of higher than a few a week, declare Albania a safe country and send people straight back, amend May's dreadful modern slavery law which is providing a bullet-proof self-fulfilling asylum claim justification - essentially a GRC for asylum claimants. These aren't hard things to do, and they are already the case in other countries including full EU members.
I do like you n all but would you stop being so PATHETIC please, what sort of Conservative are you?
Well, aside from the fact I agree with much of that, I'm one who can think for himself. All the things you list are necessary but still wouldn't be sufficient with the volumes of people who are trying it now- from all sorts of countries, not just Albania - and the problem is only going to get worse as geopolitical instability increases due to climate change and economic turmoil. I presume what triggered you there is the 'international agreement' bit - but the solution to this cannot just be domestic alone as there's a whole web of this stuff that pulls people into the West that's decades out of date and doesn't reflect the world as it is today.
You really do seem to be a dogmatic sort who thinks being a Conservative is calling out offences against Juche with capital letters whenever you think the "vibe" is a bit off what you understand to be doctrine.
It's not impressive and it's certainly not convincing; it's a road to nowhere, except defeat.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Pensioners get a holiday every week and one of the best payrises in the nation.
Although it would be hard to argue that the state pension allows a champagne lifestyle. An increase of 10% on not a lot, is a bit more, but still not a lot.
The country spends £110 billion on the state pension, so the rise costs £11 billion, and adds to inflationary pressures. A lower rise and an equal one for public sector workers would have been better.
It would also enable the Government to say that we are 'all in it together' (remember that?)
Having one rule for some, and another for others, is not conducive to good governance.
At my table in Nyhavn I ended up in conversation with an elderly Danish couple out for a meal. Often happens when eating alone.
She told me she used to travel to London a lot but “not since Brexit”, and then asked me how things were there “with all the protests in the health service and the strikes”. So it appears British domestic stuff is being piped into Nordic living rooms this winter.
I explained that, rather as with the gilet jaunes in France, what looks like violent revolution on the TV tends not to feel that way when you live there, and she should pluck up the courage to visit London again.
It was like persuading someone in the 1990s to give Beirut another look.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
He can't. It's pretty much established that Braverman wants to stop the boats more than the rest of Sunak's piss poor decline-managers. Moving her on is essentially admitting defeat on boats, and it (and she) would unleash ten tonnes of cow pat on to him, precipitating his exit. Unless she commits a new and serious misdemeanor, she stays.
Looking at the evidence, I don't think we can stop the boats by, er, stopping the boats. The French have little real interest in stopping the people smugglers as it reduces pressure on their own asylum process and on policing the migrants near their coast. Once they are afloat and in our half of the channel then, on safety grounds alone, we have to let people land.
For the umptieth time, we can only stop illegal migration by stopping the pull factor - we must make it easy for illegal immigrants to shop those who employ them (and give them fast track right to stay if they do so) and have massive criminal penalties for the owners and managers caught doing so.
Yes, but they don't work illegally from the boats, they claim asylum.
Understood. If they come in illegally on the boats then they should not be allowed to claim asylum. And yes I know we then have a problem because France won't let us send them back across the channel.
Yes, but there are very few ways to claim asylum without entering the country first. If you ban illegal migrants from gaining asylum you effectively end asylum.
I think this is where the solution will end.
The only grounds for claiming asylum "on shore" will be that you were fleeing for your life and you had no alternative or choice before getting here, and you'd have to evidence that.
Otherwise, 48-72 hours detention and next plane back.
Next plane back to where?
Say I have fled a middle eastern country in fear of my life. I somehow make it to Britain, maybe on a boat.
I am not confident I can evidence how my life is at risk back home sufficiently to qualify for asylum (how am I going to do that?) You ask me where I come from - I'm not saying.
I hope you had a good strike day. Accomplish anything?
A lot of sleep. I am not a member of the striking Union so technically wasn't. The school was closed but they wanted everyone in, including supply, for somewhat mysterious reasons. I told them I needed a "personal mental health day" (I really did, the past week has been brutal with assaults on pretty much all my colleagues), and would rather take it today than when the kids were in. I thought I was doing them a favour since they could avoid paying me. Instead they seemed pissed off. I suspect they had some busywork motivation bollocks planned.
Wifey also gets called into school when the teachers are on strike. On Monday she also pulled a personal day - I left for that London at 4am that morning and whilst our kids are old enough to be left, they're not old enough to be left home alone all day.
Like you she suffers from kids in her school who seemingly are allowed to be violent and destructive with few consequences.
If Albanians are a big chunk of the people arriving on boats then a solution presents itself: open up tens of thousands of working visas for Albanian nationals for public sector jobs where there are acute shortages, in exchange for unfettered access to housing, health and social care to retired Brits who’d like to live out their final days in sunny unspoilt Mediterranean Albania.
Dear Lord, do you really think they're coming here because they have a burning desire to be hospital porters in Hemel Hempstead? If so, can you explain why they're not just coming on a plane from Tirana for £23?
There are plenty of vacancies for qualified doctors too.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
Somewhere around the same level as private sector. 5-6% avg rise?
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
What are you going to cut or who are you going to tax more to pay for it. Ah of course the people getting 5% payrises will get the brunt.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
He can't. It's pretty much established that Braverman wants to stop the boats more than the rest of Sunak's piss poor decline-managers. Moving her on is essentially admitting defeat on boats, and it (and she) would unleash ten tonnes of cow pat on to him, precipitating his exit. Unless she commits a new and serious misdemeanor, she stays.
Looking at the evidence, I don't think we can stop the boats by, er, stopping the boats. The French have little real interest in stopping the people smugglers as it reduces pressure on their own asylum process and on policing the migrants near their coast. Once they are afloat and in our half of the channel then, on safety grounds alone, we have to let people land.
For the umptieth time, we can only stop illegal migration by stopping the pull factor - we must make it easy for illegal immigrants to shop those who employ them (and give them fast track right to stay if they do so) and have massive criminal penalties for the owners and managers caught doing so.
Yes, but they don't work illegally from the boats, they claim asylum.
Understood. If they come in illegally on the boats then they should not be allowed to claim asylum. And yes I know we then have a problem because France won't let us send them back across the channel.
Yes, but there are very few ways to claim asylum without entering the country first. If you ban illegal migrants from gaining asylum you effectively end asylum.
I think this is where the solution will end.
The only grounds for claiming asylum "on shore" will be that you were fleeing for your life and you had no alternative or choice before getting here, and you'd have to evidence that.
Otherwise, 48-72 hours detention and next plane back.
Next plane back to where?
Say I have fled a middle eastern country in fear of my life. I somehow make it to Britain, maybe on a boat.
I am not confident I can evidence how my life is at risk back home sufficiently to qualify for asylum (how am I going to do that?) You ask me where I come from - I'm not saying.
Where are you going to fly me to?
That's why the only policy that would work is a third party country like Rwanda/PNG etc to take those who won't go home.
In Australia when they implemented this policy, properly implemented it, people chose to voluntarily go home as that's better than the alternative (and they weren't really seeking 'asylum' when the alternative was 'worse'). Then since nobody was making it, the boats stopped, the drownings stopped, and not a single asylum seeker has drowned in Aussie waters in a decade now.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
I would like to see how they got the 1.2 million figure,
by my reckoning its far too high using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
You've missed out tax credits.
The vast majority of people with children get tax credits and the amounts are far greater than child benefit.
At my table in Nyhavn I ended up in conversation with an elderly Danish couple out for a meal. Often happens when eating alone.
She told me she used to travel to London a lot but “not since Brexit”, and then asked me how things were there “with all the protests in the health service and the strikes”. So it appears British domestic stuff is being piped into Nordic living rooms this winter.
I explained that, rather as with the gilet jaunes in France, what looks like violent revolution on the TV tends not to feel that way when you live there, and she should pluck up the courage to visit London again.
It was like persuading someone in the 1990s to give Beirut another look.
Last time I was in London the place was full of American tourists.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
Why Braverman? I know you hate her because she’s a right wing HS, but electorally she is on the button. She has told the Tories that if they don’t stop the boats they are FUCKED. And she is damn right
I reckon the Tories are doomed whatever they do, but if they stop the boats they can prevent a bad defeat becoming an apocalyptic rout
The Tories almost certainly can't stop the boats.
I suspect the only way under our current legal paradigm, and the tangled web of laws, charters and obligations we've got internationally, to stop the boats is to allow everyone over here a ride who wants them so they don't need to launch a boat- and hence they end.
Of course, the net result would be a massive increase in immigration.
The only alternative to actually "stop the boats" - which would mean stopping the boats and the migration - would be to reopen decades of international law and UN charters and the legal industries that surround them to requalify refugee and asylum definitions, which would probably take years, and then to forcefully police it. Which we can't do alone.
You really have no idea do you? They have already got 'a ride' if they want one - return flights to Albania are £23 at the moment.
Why would anyone pay hundreds to a sleazy trafficker to come over on a leaky dinghy? Because they don't want to go through passport control and show up on a database is why.
The way to actually stop the boats is to end the pull factors - sort out benefit entitlements, process claims at a speed of higher than a few a week, declare Albania a safe country and send people straight back, amend May's dreadful modern slavery law which is providing a bullet-proof self-fulfilling asylum claim justification - essentially a GRC for asylum claimants. These aren't hard things to do, and they are already the case in other countries including full EU members.
I do like you n all but would you stop being so PATHETIC please, what sort of Conservative are you?
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Pensioners get a holiday every week and one of the best payrises in the nation.
Although it would be hard to argue that the state pension allows a champagne lifestyle. An increase of 10% on not a lot, is a bit more, but still not a lot.
The country spends £110 billion on the state pension, so the rise costs £11 billion, and adds to inflationary pressures. A lower rise and an equal one for public sector workers would have been better.
You’re not wrong. One of Sunacs pledges is to get inflation down, and ostensibly not paying more to the strikers is part of that, but in reality inflation is mainly down to outside effects, and will start dropping of its own accord. Personally fail to understand the current strategy. Perhaps there isn’t one?
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
Somewhere around the same level as private sector. 5-6% avg rise?
The answer in a capitalist society is surely whatever the market decides, based on supply vs demand.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
I would like to see how they got the 1.2 million figure,
by my reckoning its far too high using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
You've missed out tax credits.
The vast majority of people with children get tax credits and the amounts are far greater than child benefit.
I doubt many born in 1956 got tax credits because they didn't come in till new labour era
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
What are you going to cut or who are you going to tax more to pay for it. Ah of course the people getting 5% payrises will get the brunt.
Easy.
Cut the triple lock to start with, so that everyone's pay goes up the same amount and those who aren't working don't see bigger pay rises than those who are.
Increase taxes on those who aren't paying the full rate of income tax, by merging income tax, NI etc together so people can no longer dodge NI and we all pay the same rate regardless of how we earn our income.
Do you agree with these two concepts? That everyone earning the same income should pay the same tax rate, and that those who don't work shouldn't be getting more than those who do?
If Albanians are a big chunk of the people arriving on boats then a solution presents itself: open up tens of thousands of working visas for Albanian nationals for public sector jobs where there are acute shortages, in exchange for unfettered access to housing, health and social care to retired Brits who’d like to live out their final days in sunny unspoilt Mediterranean Albania.
Dear Lord, do you really think they're coming here because they have a burning desire to be hospital porters in Hemel Hempstead? If so, can you explain why they're not just coming on a plane from Tirana for £23?
Dear Christ you really are mince.
Why don't they come on a £23 plane you say. Because they won't get a visa. No visa, no boarding the plane, £23 or not.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
Used to be and I think that's now largely gone, except on TV weirdly.
I’m too tired to find it tonight, but there’s recent polling which indicates it’s very much still a thing.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
Somewhere around the same level as private sector. 5-6% avg rise?
The answer in a capitalist society is surely whatever the market decides, based on supply vs demand.
The public sector is not part of the capitalist society though if the market decides the job pays more than a company can afford the company goes bust or learns to manage with fewer workers by introducing productivity improvements.
The public sector just dips it's hands deeper in our pockets
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Sunak needed to display the brutality of power that Johnson did, and cull all the cabinet he didn't like, shortly to be followed by culling the backbenchers who oppose him.
He didn't, so his cabinet is a mixed bag of loonies, time servers owed favours and incompetents.
Unlike in 2019, it isn't 20 odd people who disagree with him.
C. 100 Tory backbenchers probably think the state is too big (the blue wall)
C. 75 Tory backbenchers think the state is too small (the levelling uppers)
C. 25 Tory backbenchers won't be continuing past the next GE
There is too high a risk of being ousted by either side. Sunak seems to think by becoming a do nothing uncontroversial govt he might make it through. Johnson's political nous was to realise that the 100 blue wallers could be bought off in one way, and the 75 levelling uppers in another, cancelling each other out. If he hadn't have sacked Cummings I think he'd still be bestriding British politics, as Tim Shipman said, 'like a Giant toad'....
Hi Mortimer, good to see you posting.
Yesterday you said: "Brexit makes my business life inordinately easier than it would be if we were still in the EU."
I was genuinely interested in how and why that is since as far as I can see every other business is seeing Brexit as neutral or negative.
Hi Ben,
Here are a few examples:
1) When we were in the EU, I had more European dealers competing with me to buy stock in the UK. That has largely stopped now, or rather, has diminished. So my margins on some products have increased whilst my retail prices have remained the same.
2) The EU regulation of antiques (including books) coming into the EU customs union has drastically increased, apparently to reduce crime (smuggling) and terrorism, even when the law enforcement agencies (I think it was Interpol) were relatively hazy about the impact this would have. So I don't have to worry about import certificates if, say, I buy something from the US or Australia
3) The EU cross border VAT rate changes would have been a sodding nightmare for booksellers - as in the UK books are zero rated but not in pretty much every other EU nation. So some rather convoluted accounting for goods sold to end users in different EU countries.
I recognise I'm in a sweet spot both business wise (selling largely english language books), scale wise (I'm mid-sized for my industry), and industry wise (we're a niche product), but honestly, being out is a huge huge boon for me.
If Rishi does want to scrape the least bad loss (I think a win is now out of the question), he needs to get rid of Raab and Braverman like he (under duress) got rid of Zahawi and Williamson.
Why Braverman? I know you hate her because she’s a right wing HS, but electorally she is on the button. She has told the Tories that if they don’t stop the boats they are FUCKED. And she is damn right
I reckon the Tories are doomed whatever they do, but if they stop the boats they can prevent a bad defeat becoming an apocalyptic rout
The Tories almost certainly can't stop the boats.
I suspect the only way under our current legal paradigm, and the tangled web of laws, charters and obligations we've got internationally, to stop the boats is to allow everyone over here a ride who wants them so they don't need to launch a boat- and hence they end.
Of course, the net result would be a massive increase in immigration.
The only alternative to actually "stop the boats" - which would mean stopping the boats and the migration - would be to reopen decades of international law and UN charters and the legal industries that surround them to requalify refugee and asylum definitions, which would probably take years, and then to forcefully police it. Which we can't do alone.
You really have no idea do you? They have already got 'a ride' if they want one - return flights to Albania are £23 at the moment.
Why would anyone pay hundreds to a sleazy trafficker to come over on a leaky dinghy? Because they don't want to go through passport control and show up on a database is why.
The way to actually stop the boats is to end the pull factors - sort out benefit entitlements, process claims at a speed of higher than a few a week, declare Albania a safe country and send people straight back, amend May's dreadful modern slavery law which is providing a bullet-proof self-fulfilling asylum claim justification - essentially a GRC for asylum claimants. These aren't hard things to do, and they are already the case in other countries including full EU members.
I do like you n all but would you stop being so PATHETIC please, what sort of Conservative are you?
Well, aside from the fact I agree with much of that, I'm one who can think for himself. All the things you list are necessary but still wouldn't be sufficient with the volumes of people who are trying it now- from all sorts of countries, not just Albania - and the problem is only going to get worse as geopolitical instability increases due to climate change and economic turmoil. I presume what triggered you there is the 'international agreement' bit - but the solution to this cannot just be domestic alone as there's a whole web of this stuff that pulls people into the West that's decades out of date and doesn't reflect the world as it is today.
You really do seem to be a dogmatic sort who thinks being a Conservative is calling out offences against Juche with capital letters whenever you think the "vibe" is a bit off what you understand to be doctrine.
It's not impressive and it's certainly not convincing; it's a road to nowhere, except defeat.
I don't get triggered; I get irritated, and what irritated me about your flaccid outpouring is the Sunakite defeatism, the way it's all toooo haaaaard. Except it's not that hard, for everyone else. Including France, where even French politicians have given evidence before Commons comittees that Britain needs to toughen up and eliminate the pull factors. We are so shit at this it's even annoying the countries they are coming through to get to us. Or Germany, which has declared Albania safe, and is sending people back there, despite being a full EU member.
I am not at all doctrinaire about politics - free market capitalism, or state intervention, it's all the same to me, the impact, and whether the policy understands people and works with the grain of humanity, are the key factors. But I do draw the line at just rolling over and playing dead - that's what Sunak’s ministry of misery is all about, and that is the REAL way to defeat.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
I would like to see how they got the 1.2 million figure,
by my reckoning its far too high using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
You've missed out tax credits.
The vast majority of people with children get tax credits and the amounts are far greater than child benefit.
I doubt many born in 1956 got tax credits because they didn't come in till new labour era
Ah OK, thanks, hadn't gone back to see earlier posts.
At my table in Nyhavn I ended up in conversation with an elderly Danish couple out for a meal. Often happens when eating alone.
She told me she used to travel to London a lot but “not since Brexit”, and then asked me how things were there “with all the protests in the health service and the strikes”. So it appears British domestic stuff is being piped into Nordic living rooms this winter.
I explained that, rather as with the gilet jaunes in France, what looks like violent revolution on the TV tends not to feel that way when you live there, and she should pluck up the courage to visit London again.
It was like persuading someone in the 1990s to give Beirut another look.
Last time I was in London the place was full of American tourists.
At my table in Nyhavn I ended up in conversation with an elderly Danish couple out for a meal. Often happens when eating alone.
She told me she used to travel to London a lot but “not since Brexit”, and then asked me how things were there “with all the protests in the health service and the strikes”. So it appears British domestic stuff is being piped into Nordic living rooms this winter.
I explained that, rather as with the gilet jaunes in France, what looks like violent revolution on the TV tends not to feel that way when you live there, and she should pluck up the courage to visit London again.
It was like persuading someone in the 1990s to give Beirut another look.
Last time I was in London the place was full of American tourists.
There are lots of American, Chinese, Indian and a fair few European tourists. Maybe not as many as before Covid and fewer school groups because it’s more bureaucratic to get here now, but still a lot. But it seems 2 fewer elderly Danes than before. The challenge is getting the Americans to venture beyond London, York and Edinburgh of course.
The conversation this evening was interesting because it shows how British politics and events still get disproportionate coverage on global media.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
What are you going to cut or who are you going to tax more to pay for it. Ah of course the people getting 5% payrises will get the brunt.
Easy.
Cut the triple lock to start with, so that everyone's pay goes up the same amount and those who aren't working don't see bigger pay rises than those who are.
Increase taxes on those who aren't paying the full rate of income tax, by merging income tax, NI etc together so people can no longer dodge NI and we all pay the same rate regardless of how we earn our income.
Do you agree with these two concepts? That everyone earning the same income should pay the same tax rate, and that those who don't work shouldn't be getting more than those who do?
I am fine with the latter, in fact I suggested state pension clawback once on here at a rate of 1£ for every 5£ of private pension over 5k as well as NI.
I don't agree however with pensioners not getting the full col rise because most aren't in a position to increase their income where as most working age people are either via retraining or taking on extra work.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
Somewhere around the same level as private sector. 5-6% avg rise?
The answer in a capitalist society is surely whatever the market decides, based on supply vs demand.
That would mean abolishing the public sector entirely.
I'm not entirely against it, but I don't think you really want that, do you?
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Sunak needed to display the brutality of power that Johnson did, and cull all the cabinet he didn't like, shortly to be followed by culling the backbenchers who oppose him.
He didn't, so his cabinet is a mixed bag of loonies, time servers owed favours and incompetents.
Unlike in 2019, it isn't 20 odd people who disagree with him.
C. 100 Tory backbenchers probably think the state is too big (the blue wall)
C. 75 Tory backbenchers think the state is too small (the levelling uppers)
C. 25 Tory backbenchers won't be continuing past the next GE
There is too high a risk of being ousted by either side. Sunak seems to think by becoming a do nothing uncontroversial govt he might make it through. Johnson's political nous was to realise that the 100 blue wallers could be bought off in one way, and the 75 levelling uppers in another, cancelling each other out. If he hadn't have sacked Cummings I think he'd still be bestriding British politics, as Tim Shipman said, 'like a Giant toad'....
Hi Mortimer, good to see you posting.
Yesterday you said: "Brexit makes my business life inordinately easier than it would be if we were still in the EU."
I was genuinely interested in how and why that is since as far as I can see every other business is seeing Brexit as neutral or negative.
Hi Ben,
Here are a few examples:
1) When we were in the EU, I had more European dealers competing with me to buy stock in the UK. That has largely stopped now, or rather, has diminished. So my margins on some products have increased whilst my retail prices have remained the same.
2) The EU regulation of antiques (including books) coming into the EU customs union has drastically increased, apparently to reduce crime (smuggling) and terrorism, even when the law enforcement agencies (I think it was Interpol) were relatively hazy about the impact this would have. So I don't have to worry about import certificates if, say, I buy something from the US or Australia
3) The EU cross border VAT rate changes would have been a sodding nightmare for booksellers - as in the UK books are zero rated but not in pretty much every other EU nation. So some rather convoluted accounting for goods sold to end users in different EU countries.
I recognise I'm in a sweet spot both business wise (selling largely english language books), scale wise (I'm mid-sized for my industry), and industry wise (we're a niche product), but honestly, being out is a huge huge boon for me.
Like anything in life there'll be swings and roundabouts, but in general the people who speak the loudest will be those who are complaining as they're unhappy (so negative) rather than those who are satisfied who'll typically be quiet if not even taking it for granted.
So its good to hear someone giving a personal take on how its benefiting them, rather than the other way around.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
I would like to see how they got the 1.2 million figure,
by my reckoning its far too high using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
Interesting analysis.
OTOH the £940k tax figure seems quite high. It's £18.8k tax per year for 50 years. I know there's VAT, and Council Tax but a person on the median UK salary of £33,2800 pa only pays £6.8k pa in Income Tax and NI.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
I would like to see how they got the 1.2 million figure,
by my reckoning its far too high using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
You've missed out tax credits.
The vast majority of people with children get tax credits and the amounts are far greater than child benefit.
I doubt many born in 1956 got tax credits because they didn't come in till new labour era
Ah OK, thanks, hadn't gone back to see earlier posts.
No worries, I just did some back of the envelope calculations as the figures seemed less than believable
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
What are you going to cut or who are you going to tax more to pay for it. Ah of course the people getting 5% payrises will get the brunt.
Easy.
Cut the triple lock to start with, so that everyone's pay goes up the same amount and those who aren't working don't see bigger pay rises than those who are.
Increase taxes on those who aren't paying the full rate of income tax, by merging income tax, NI etc together so people can no longer dodge NI and we all pay the same rate regardless of how we earn our income.
Do you agree with these two concepts? That everyone earning the same income should pay the same tax rate, and that those who don't work shouldn't be getting more than those who do?
I am fine with the latter, in fact I suggested state pension clawback once on here at a rate of 1£ for every 5£ of private pension over 5k as well as NI.
I don't agree however with pensioners not getting the full col rise because most aren't in a position to increase their income where as most working age people are either via retraining or taking on extra work.
I was ridiculed on here for several weeks whilst describing how busy cities were, restaurants, theatres etc. Turns out the economic sitch wasn't as bad as expected at the end of last year. The media-public sector complex has a lot to answer for....
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
Somewhere around the same level as private sector. 5-6% avg rise?
The answer in a capitalist society is surely whatever the market decides, based on supply vs demand.
The public sector is not part of the capitalist society though if the market decides the job pays more than a company can afford the company goes bust or learns to manage with fewer workers by introducing productivity improvements.
The public sector just dips it's hands deeper in our pockets
Of course it’s a market, unless you plan to force people to work in the health service of teaching as a form of national service. They can - and do, in ever increasing numbers - vote with their feet and leave for less stressful better paid private sector jobs.
The solution is either to pay much more, or significantly increase immigration to plug the gaps. Our economically illiterate government wants to do neither, then wonders why there are staff shortages.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
I would like to see how they got the 1.2 million figure,
by my reckoning its far too high using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
Interesting analysis.
OTOH the £940k tax figure seems quite high. It's £18.8k tax per year for 50 years. I know there's VAT, and Council Tax but a person on the median UK salary of £33,2800 pa only pays £6.8k pa in Income Tax and NI.
Yes I suspect that value is just as wrong, calculating it was the more complex of the two however so I did a rough calc on the other.
Once you show one figure is probably way out then all figures are suspect
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
What are you going to cut or who are you going to tax more to pay for it. Ah of course the people getting 5% payrises will get the brunt.
Easy.
Cut the triple lock to start with, so that everyone's pay goes up the same amount and those who aren't working don't see bigger pay rises than those who are.
Increase taxes on those who aren't paying the full rate of income tax, by merging income tax, NI etc together so people can no longer dodge NI and we all pay the same rate regardless of how we earn our income.
Do you agree with these two concepts? That everyone earning the same income should pay the same tax rate, and that those who don't work shouldn't be getting more than those who do?
I am fine with the latter, in fact I suggested state pension clawback once on here at a rate of 1£ for every 5£ of private pension over 5k as well as NI.
I don't agree however with pensioners not getting the full col rise because most aren't in a position to increase their income where as most working age people are either via retraining or taking on extra work.
Pensioners could work if they choose to do so, if they're not doing so that's a choice. You're not forbidden from working just because you've reached pension age and hundreds of thousands of them do.
If you want to help the poorest pensioners with COL then then there's pension credit for that, but simply giving a blanket £11bn to all pensioners regardless of circumstances, there's absolutely no need for that, or justification for it when those who are actually working for a living are losing out.
I hope you had a good strike day. Accomplish anything?
A lot of sleep. I am not a member of the striking Union so technically wasn't. The school was closed but they wanted everyone in, including supply, for somewhat mysterious reasons. I told them I needed a "personal mental health day" (I really did, the past week has been brutal with assaults on pretty much all my colleagues), and would rather take it today than when the kids were in. I thought I was doing them a favour since they could avoid paying me. Instead they seemed pissed off. I suspect they had some busywork motivation bollocks planned.
Wifey also gets called into school when the teachers are on strike. On Monday she also pulled a personal day - I left for that London at 4am that morning and whilst our kids are old enough to be left, they're not old enough to be left home alone all day.
Like you she suffers from kids in her school who seemingly are allowed to be violent and destructive with few consequences.
There's no expulsion anymore. As there are no places available for anyone to go to. A holiday every six weeks? We've five staff in our lodge. Since Thursday we've had a concussion, a broken big toe and two bitten. The number of slaps, kicks and objects thrown at us is uncountable. Then there is the verbal abuse No way should we get a pay rise.
I just spent a few minutes reading some of the last thread (not realising I wasn’t on the last page) before noticing there was a new one.
The free flowing meanders of an afternoon of PB are fascinating. Page 2 was full of fierce and tenacious trans related debate (without, as someone commented, anyone actually trans on the forum, something I think is badly missed because it makes the debates very hypothetical).
Page 6 was best pubs. I don’t have a favourite. Used to, should do now (I’d love if to be the Duck in Pett Bottom near the vineyard but it’s not) but don’t.
Now we’re on to polls. Last night I was - rightly - being derided for an overly precious reaction to being interrogated at Copenhagen passport control. Tonight I’m at peace (ish) with Brexit as I tuck into a bit of seafood at an extremely touristy spot in Nyhavn.
I find it fascinating (not the subject, the process) of how people can endlessly debate "trans" without the discussion ever going anywhere and it being about 84th on anyone's list of the most important issues facing the country.
I presume because it's about values and identity and so it never ends.
By contrast I find it beyond tedious. It's the same posters repeating the same points endlessly across each other, on almost every thread. Marking all posts with a large T so that we can
swiftly ignore is a jolly good idea.
The endless posts by the same people who are clearly utterly obsessed by the matter is ruining the site. I spend little time on here now simply because of the interminable drivel from Carlotta etc.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
The issue there is more likely prejudice against employing the over 50s. The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
I would like to see how they got the 1.2 million figure,
by my reckoning its far too high using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
You've missed out tax credits.
The vast majority of people with children get tax credits and the amounts are far greater than child benefit.
I doubt many born in 1956 got tax credits because they didn't come in till new labour era
Prior to Tax Credits was Income Support, and prior to that was Supplementary Benefit, and prior to that National Assistance.
These varied somewhat in scope and generosity, but we're the "in work benefits" for families with children of their time.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
Somewhere around the same level as private sector. 5-6% avg rise?
The answer in a capitalist society is surely whatever the market decides, based on supply vs demand.
The public sector is not part of the capitalist society though if the market decides the job pays more than a company can afford the company goes bust or learns to manage with fewer workers by introducing productivity improvements.
The public sector just dips it's hands deeper in our pockets
But there isn't a box of workers labelled "for Public Sector Use Only".
If you want to stop people currently in the public sector from going to work for other employers or doing something completely different, the overall package has to be sufficient to get and retain sufficient sufficiently good people. There's lots of evidence that isn't the case right now.
(There's a genuine problem here. The functions that are left in the public sector tend to be the ones where big productivity improvements are tricky to find. Not impossible, but tricky. But the staff cost has to go up, or you won't get the people you need. There's a proper name for this in economics, which escapes me.)
Anyone in their 50s / early 60s no longer working should get a State Pension Forecast immediately - you can do it in literally 5 minutes on Gov.uk.
You can usually only fill in missing years of NI contributions for up to 6 years - but exceptionally until 5 April 2023 you can fill in all years back to 2006/07.
It's usually said that you need 35 years of NI contributions for a full state pension but if you have been contracted out you need many more years.
If this applies to you it is MASSIVE. To fill in a year you pay approx £800 and you get approx £5 per week (ie £260 per year) more state pension.
If you live in retirement for 20 years you are paying £800 to get back £5,200. And of course it's triple locked.
Once you get your forecast, ring the Future Pension Service Helpline on 0800 731 0175 and they will talk it through with you.
I did it yesterday - it took 75 mins for them to answer - but the person who did was brilliant - highly intelligent and knew everything.
If you have retired early or just not worked for certain periods this literally may be one of the most important things you ever do.
I think that what frustrates me about the Tory approach to every one of these issues is that they have *no policy* to address *any* issues. HUYFD is a great touchstone for this: every concern is met by a response that it isn't actually a problem and everything will be fine, on the basis that no single thing affects more than 50% of people (and those it does affect are unlikely to vote Tory anyway).
That's no way to govern. And totally unlike the Tory party I once supported.
And as noted above, completely unlike Thatcher.
Who I remain a great fan of, even as I understand that many of her reforms didn’t succeed on her own terms.
Thatcher was more a classical Liberal than traditional patrician Tory, even if obviously not a statist Socialist either
No she wasn't. She: Sold off council houses at a discount; Kept the MIRAS housing subsidy going as long as she could; and Never exposed farners to the free market. She was bourgeouis to her bones.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
Somewhere around the same level as private sector. 5-6% avg rise?
The answer in a capitalist society is surely whatever the market decides, based on supply vs demand.
That would mean abolishing the public sector entirely.
I'm not entirely against it, but I don't think you really want that, do you?
It wouldn’t at all. It’s what happens right now. At the moment we have regulated public healthcare provision and a very limited market on the supplier side, the consumer side and the funding side. But we have market conditions for employment and pay: we don’t force people to work in the NHS nor do we restrict them from moving job to the private sector. We don’t even prevent NHS doctors from working in private practice.
You could conceivably argue the health service should be based on conscription - everyone at the age of 18 must do 2 years compulsory national service either in the armed forces or one of the services like nursing or police, but that would be a big leap from today.
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Sunak needed to display the brutality of power that Johnson did, and cull all the cabinet he didn't like, shortly to be followed by culling the backbenchers who oppose him.
He didn't, so his cabinet is a mixed bag of loonies, time servers owed favours and incompetents.
Unlike in 2019, it isn't 20 odd people who disagree with him.
C. 100 Tory backbenchers probably think the state is too big (the blue wall)
C. 75 Tory backbenchers think the state is too small (the levelling uppers)
C. 25 Tory backbenchers won't be continuing past the next GE
There is too high a risk of being ousted by either side. Sunak seems to think by becoming a do nothing uncontroversial govt he might make it through. Johnson's political nous was to realise that the 100 blue wallers could be bought off in one way, and the 75 levelling uppers in another, cancelling each other out. If he hadn't have sacked Cummings I think he'd still be bestriding British politics, as Tim Shipman said, 'like a Giant toad'....
Hi Mortimer, good to see you posting.
Yesterday you said: "Brexit makes my business life inordinately easier than it would be if we were still in the EU."
I was genuinely interested in how and why that is since as far as I can see every other business is seeing Brexit as neutral or negative.
Hi Ben,
Here are a few examples:
1) When we were in the EU, I had more European dealers competing with me to buy stock in the UK. That has largely stopped now, or rather, has diminished. So my margins on some products have increased whilst my retail prices have remained the same.
2) The EU regulation of antiques (including books) coming into the EU customs union has drastically increased, apparently to reduce crime (smuggling) and terrorism, even when the law enforcement agencies (I think it was Interpol) were relatively hazy about the impact this would have. So I don't have to worry about import certificates if, say, I buy something from the US or Australia
3) The EU cross border VAT rate changes would have been a sodding nightmare for booksellers - as in the UK books are zero rated but not in pretty much every other EU nation. So some rather convoluted accounting for goods sold to end users in different EU countries.
I recognise I'm in a sweet spot both business wise (selling largely english language books), scale wise (I'm mid-sized for my industry), and industry wise (we're a niche product), but honestly, being out is a huge huge boon for me.
Thanks, interesting.
Re point 3) Doesn't that still apply to books you sell to the EU?
Anyway, I am glad your business is doing well.
PS Why is "Some Unusual Engines" by L J K Setright so expensive? I used to have a copy and lent it to someone, never got it back. Whenever I look to get a replacement copy it's always well over £100, so I demur.
As Duncan Robinson recently noted in the Economist:
“On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.”
And yet despite this the boomer sense of entitlement remains undimmed, as we can see in the current debate about how to reduce the number of older people dropping out of the labour market. Despite its obvious absurdity the idea of giving people in their 50s and 60s income tax breaks in order to continue working is being heavily promoted in the Tory friendly press; the Telegraph, Mail and Express now being essentially Union newsletters for pensioners.
In April we will see the Pensioners get 10.1%, while the workers get stuffed again. No wonder they strike.
Was berated by an angry pensioner today. Holiday every six weeks and I want a pay rise. Shortly after a moan about rising prices.
Internally consistent I suppose. Pay rises for public sector workers will almost certainty sustain price inflation.
That’s just echoing the government bullshit line. How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
Somewhere around the same level as private sector. 5-6% avg rise?
The answer in a capitalist society is surely whatever the market decides, based on supply vs demand.
The public sector is not part of the capitalist society though if the market decides the job pays more than a company can afford the company goes bust or learns to manage with fewer workers by introducing productivity improvements.
The public sector just dips it's hands deeper in our pockets
Of course it’s a market, unless you plan to force people to work in the health service of teaching as a form of national service. They can - and do, in ever increasing numbers - vote with their feet and leave for less stressful better paid private sector jobs.
The solution is either to pay much more, or significantly increase immigration to plug the gaps. Our economically illiterate government wants to do neither, then wonders why there are staff shortages.
Then the public sector can learn to do more with less people and stop wasting money on pet projects. Simple as that just like private sector companies have to when they can't afford pay rises.
We keep hearing for example that there are more people applying for nursing courses than places so seems to me the scarcity is artificial. We also have more nurses than ever before currently which suggests that despite the furore about vacancies there are plenty still wanting to be a nurse.
Sunak of course had a golden opportunity to throw Braverman to the wolves in the first week or so of his premiership.
He flunked it, and possibly, with that, flunked his chances in 24.
Not sure how much opportunity there really was. He was never in a very strong position.
A leader’s mana is usually highest when they first take power.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Sunak needed to display the brutality of power that Johnson did, and cull all the cabinet he didn't like, shortly to be followed by culling the backbenchers who oppose him.
He didn't, so his cabinet is a mixed bag of loonies, time servers owed favours and incompetents.
Unlike in 2019, it isn't 20 odd people who disagree with him.
C. 100 Tory backbenchers probably think the state is too big (the blue wall)
C. 75 Tory backbenchers think the state is too small (the levelling uppers)
C. 25 Tory backbenchers won't be continuing past the next GE
There is too high a risk of being ousted by either side. Sunak seems to think by becoming a do nothing uncontroversial govt he might make it through. Johnson's political nous was to realise that the 100 blue wallers could be bought off in one way, and the 75 levelling uppers in another, cancelling each other out. If he hadn't have sacked Cummings I think he'd still be bestriding British politics, as Tim Shipman said, 'like a Giant toad'....
Hi Mortimer, good to see you posting.
Yesterday you said: "Brexit makes my business life inordinately easier than it would be if we were still in the EU."
I was genuinely interested in how and why that is since as far as I can see every other business is seeing Brexit as neutral or negative.
Hi Ben,
Here are a few examples:
1) When we were in the EU, I had more European dealers competing with me to buy stock in the UK. That has largely stopped now, or rather, has diminished. So my margins on some products have increased whilst my retail prices have remained the same.
2) The EU regulation of antiques (including books) coming into the EU customs union has drastically increased, apparently to reduce crime (smuggling) and terrorism, even when the law enforcement agencies (I think it was Interpol) were relatively hazy about the impact this would have. So I don't have to worry about import certificates if, say, I buy something from the US or Australia
3) The EU cross border VAT rate changes would have been a sodding nightmare for booksellers - as in the UK books are zero rated but not in pretty much every other EU nation. So some rather convoluted accounting for goods sold to end users in different EU countries.
I recognise I'm in a sweet spot both business wise (selling largely english language books), scale wise (I'm mid-sized for my industry), and industry wise (we're a niche product), but honestly, being out is a huge huge boon for me.
So if only the whole country could make a living all selling old stuff to one another, we’d be fine?
Comments
It's the same posters repeating the same points endlessly across each other, on almost every thread.
Marking all posts with a large T so that we can swiftly ignore is a jolly good idea.
Sunak obviously did a deal with Braverman, and that got him over the line. However she managed to fuck things up immediately and he passed over the opportunity to take advantage.
Such timidity says everything about his chances of winning the next election.
Truss' mistake was familiarity, I think, rather than naivety, with Whitehall. The knew what the levers were and so pushed them quicker. Too quickly. A real shame, because her pro growth policies actually had a chance of changing the fortunes of the nation relatively swiftly.
I am not a member of the striking Union so technically wasn't. The school was closed but they wanted everyone in, including supply, for somewhat mysterious reasons.
I told them I needed a "personal mental health day" (I really did, the past week has been brutal with assaults on pretty much all my colleagues), and would rather take it today than when the kids were in.
I thought I was doing them a favour since they could avoid paying me.
Instead they seemed pissed off.
I suspect they had some busywork motivation bollocks planned.
If you come on here to practice your debating skills, my advice would be you need some lessons first.
My rates are very reasonable if you want to contact me...
In 1979 they stood up against vested interests to allow young people to buy their own homes - and hence won the youth vote
- and today they defend vested interests whilst young people are priced out of the market, and they've whacked them with tuition fees on top, effectively a massive tax increase.
That's the problem. Tory vote and home ownership is strongly correlated, and always has been. I don't think this is anything new. Capitalism works when it's spread far and wide.
Yes, young people today have slightly different values - as every consecutive generation does - but there's not a tide of socialism sweeping over them.
As for timidity, Sunak certainly has excellent personal publicity, coming out of all this as some sort of John Major/Dennis Thatcher figure, nice guy, but hen-pecked by his awful party. He was the one that had Gavin Williamson as his campaign manager and put him at the heart of his team; he was the one that appointed Zahawi.
I visited a school in Telford in 2018 where they had so many directed hours of meeting and training that they had no time to mark any work. What's the point of that?
The England VI numbers are Labour 47, Conservative 27 which would be a 16.5% from Conservative to Labour. That mirrors the swing in the key 65+ age group which the Conservatives still lead 45-29 but that is a 16.5% swing to Labour from 2019.
The swing among 2016 Remain voters is just 7.5% with the Conservatives third behind the LDs. Among the Leavers it's still 46-28 to the Conservatives but that's a 20% swing to Labour.
He didn't, so his cabinet is a mixed bag of loonies, time servers owed favours and incompetents, sometimes all 3 combined.
it would have shown strength, and cunning.
Instead he is weak and vulnerable.
It is not home ownership putting Starmer ahead, indeed controlling immigration is just as important as building new homes to get more young people on the housing ladder anyway
Location, location, location.
https://twitter.com/bydonkeys/status/1620798132589060096?s=46&t=8uoUBDQFzguVMIdM3PiRbw
“Pandemic Profiteer”
VG
I suspect the only way under our current legal paradigm, and the tangled web of laws, charters and obligations we've got internationally, to stop the boats is to allow everyone over here a ride who wants them so they don't need to launch a boat- and hence they end.
Of course, the net result would be a massive increase in immigration.
The only alternative to actually "stop the boats" - which would mean stopping the boats and the migration - would be to reopen decades of international law and UN charters and the legal industries that surround them to requalify refugee and asylum definitions, which would probably take years, and then to forcefully police it. Which we can't do alone.
C. 100 Tory backbenchers probably think the state is too big (the blue wall)
C. 75 Tory backbenchers think the state is too small (the levelling uppers)
C. 25 Tory backbenchers won't be continuing past the next GE
There is too high a risk of being ousted by either side. Sunak seems to think by becoming a do nothing uncontroversial govt he might make it through. Johnson's political nous was to realise that the 100 blue wallers could be bought off in one way, and the 75 levelling uppers in another, cancelling each other out. If he hadn't have sacked Cummings I think he'd still be bestriding British politics, as Tim Shipman said, 'like a Giant toad'....
It is very sad that you think it is ok to wait for parents to die.
The incentives ought to be for the employers, not the prematurely retired.
It's just the optics of boat infiltrations are fucking awful- about 10 times worse - as they're an obvious breach of a secure border, very clearly exploited by gangs and it makes our legal impotence and loopholes so bloody obvious, and a mockery of 'control'
And, because the punters know this - that it's all piss and wind and we can't do anything about it - demand will continue to grow and grow until the boat crossings exceed all previous records.
They must be stopped. But they probably can't be stopped.
All this time I thought it was the “Lord Rodney’s Head” but having googled it that seems to be in Whitechapel and don’t think we would be arsed - would have sworn it was in backstreets round Euston/Kings X. Would be delighted if anyone else had the dubious pleasure and frankly the name of the pub.
What would be really interesting would be the small print from opinion polls in 1995ish.
You were a high earner, most people aren't. In London and the Home counties you could work 24/7 on an average salary and still not have enough to buy a house.
Only north of the Watford Gap can you afford to buy on an average salary with no assistance.
I am a Tory too you are a Liberal, inherited wealth has always been a key Tory value
The only grounds for claiming asylum "on shore" will be that you were fleeing for your life and you had no alternative or choice before getting here, and you'd have to evidence that.
Otherwise, 48-72 hours detention and next plane back.
https://www.skyscanner.net/flights-to/al/cheap-flights-to-albania.html
Why would anyone pay hundreds to a sleazy trafficker to come over on a leaky dinghy? Because they don't want to go through passport control and show up on a database is why.
The way to actually stop the boats is to end the pull factors - sort out benefit entitlements, process claims at a speed of higher than a few a week, declare Albania a safe country and send people straight back, amend May's dreadful modern slavery law which is providing a bullet-proof self-fulfilling asylum claim justification - essentially a GRC for asylum claimants. These aren't hard things to do, and they are already the case in other countries including full EU members.
I do like you n all but would you stop being so PATHETIC please, what sort of Conservative are you?
by my reckoning its far too high
using even today figures
Education 11 years time 7k (most born in 56 will have not gone to uni or even a levels) = 77k
Child benefit for 2 kids 35 * 52 * 18 = 32k
Pension and lets be generous and say they live till 95 hence 30 years at 10k = 300k
health care = xk
unemployment = yk
total figure then is 77 + 32 + 300 + x + y = 399 + x +y
x+y therefore average 800k per person. Sorry frankly that guy is talking bollocks
Yesterday you said: "Brexit makes my business life inordinately easier than it would be if we were still in the EU."
I was genuinely interested in how and why that is since as far as I can see every other business is seeing Brexit as neutral or negative.
You really do seem to be a dogmatic sort who thinks being a Conservative is calling out offences against Juche with capital letters whenever you think the "vibe" is a bit off what you understand to be doctrine.
It's not impressive and it's certainly not convincing; it's a road to nowhere, except defeat.
Having one rule for some, and another for others, is not conducive to good governance.
She told me she used to travel to London a lot but “not since Brexit”, and then asked me how things were there “with all the protests in the health service and the strikes”. So it appears British domestic stuff is being piped into Nordic living rooms this winter.
I explained that, rather as with the gilet jaunes in France, what looks like violent revolution on the TV tends not to feel that way when you live there, and she should pluck up the courage to visit London again.
It was like persuading someone in the 1990s to give Beirut another look.
Say I have fled a middle eastern country in fear of my life. I somehow make it to Britain, maybe on a boat.
I am not confident I can evidence how my life is at risk back home sufficiently to qualify for asylum (how am I going to do that?) You ask me where I come from - I'm not saying.
Where are you going to fly me to?
Like you she suffers from kids in her school who seemingly are allowed to be violent and destructive with few consequences.
How far below inflation would you say the public sector should be settling - how big of a pay reduction ?
In Australia when they implemented this policy, properly implemented it, people chose to voluntarily go home as that's better than the alternative (and they weren't really seeking 'asylum' when the alternative was 'worse'). Then since nobody was making it, the boats stopped, the drownings stopped, and not a single asylum seeker has drowned in Aussie waters in a decade now.
The vast majority of people with children get tax credits and the amounts are far greater than child benefit.
No wonder you can't sort it. You're living this delusion where the people in boats get riches when they get here.
Personally fail to understand the current strategy. Perhaps there isn’t one?
Cut the triple lock to start with, so that everyone's pay goes up the same amount and those who aren't working don't see bigger pay rises than those who are.
Increase taxes on those who aren't paying the full rate of income tax, by merging income tax, NI etc together so people can no longer dodge NI and we all pay the same rate regardless of how we earn our income.
Do you agree with these two concepts? That everyone earning the same income should pay the same tax rate, and that those who don't work shouldn't be getting more than those who do?
Why don't they come on a £23 plane you say. Because they won't get a visa. No visa, no boarding the plane, £23 or not.
The public sector just dips it's hands deeper in our pockets
Here are a few examples:
1) When we were in the EU, I had more European dealers competing with me to buy stock in the UK. That has largely stopped now, or rather, has diminished. So my margins on some products have increased whilst my retail prices have remained the same.
2) The EU regulation of antiques (including books) coming into the EU customs union has drastically increased, apparently to reduce crime (smuggling) and terrorism, even when the law enforcement agencies (I think it was Interpol) were relatively hazy about the impact this would have. So I don't have to worry about import certificates if, say, I buy something from the US or Australia
3) The EU cross border VAT rate changes would have been a sodding nightmare for booksellers - as in the UK books are zero rated but not in pretty much every other EU nation. So some rather convoluted accounting for goods sold to end users in different EU countries.
I recognise I'm in a sweet spot both business wise (selling largely english language books), scale wise (I'm mid-sized for my industry), and industry wise (we're a niche product), but honestly, being out is a huge huge boon for me.
I am not at all doctrinaire about politics - free market capitalism, or state intervention, it's all the same to me, the impact, and whether the policy understands people and works with the grain of humanity, are the key factors. But I do draw the line at just rolling over and playing dead - that's what Sunak’s ministry of misery is all about, and that is the REAL way to defeat.
The conversation this evening was interesting because it shows how British politics and events still get disproportionate coverage on global media.
I don't agree however with pensioners not getting the full col rise because most aren't in a position to increase their income where as most working age people are either via retraining or taking on extra work.
I'm not entirely against it, but I don't think you really want that, do you?
So its good to hear someone giving a personal take on how its benefiting them, rather than the other way around.
Sweden and London have a similar population, around 9 to 10 million.
Last year there were 60 gun deaths in Sweden and 9 in London.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-hits-record-with-60-shot-dead-2022-2022-12-19/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-64183759
OTOH the £940k tax figure seems quite high. It's £18.8k tax per year for 50 years. I know there's VAT, and Council Tax but a person on the median UK salary of £33,2800 pa only pays £6.8k pa in Income Tax and NI.
The solution is either to pay much more, or significantly increase immigration to plug the gaps. Our economically illiterate government wants to do neither, then wonders why there are staff shortages.
Once you show one figure is probably way out then all figures are suspect
If you want to help the poorest pensioners with COL then then there's pension credit for that, but simply giving a blanket £11bn to all pensioners regardless of circumstances, there's absolutely no need for that, or justification for it when those who are actually working for a living are losing out.
As there are no places available for anyone to go to.
A holiday every six weeks?
We've five staff in our lodge. Since Thursday we've had a concussion, a broken big toe and two bitten. The number of slaps, kicks and objects thrown at us is uncountable. Then there is the verbal abuse
No way should we get a pay rise.
Do you have the figures handy for, say, New York or Los Angeles?
These varied somewhat in scope and generosity, but we're the "in work benefits" for families with children of their time.
If you want to stop people currently in the public sector from going to work for other employers or doing something completely different, the overall package has to be sufficient to get and retain sufficient sufficiently good people. There's lots of evidence that isn't the case right now.
(There's a genuine problem here. The functions that are left in the public sector tend to be the ones where big productivity improvements are tricky to find. Not impossible, but tricky. But the staff cost has to go up, or you won't get the people you need. There's a proper name for this in economics, which escapes me.)
You can usually only fill in missing years of NI contributions for up to 6 years - but exceptionally until 5 April 2023 you can fill in all years back to 2006/07.
It's usually said that you need 35 years of NI contributions for a full state pension but if you have been contracted out you need many more years.
If this applies to you it is MASSIVE. To fill in a year you pay approx £800 and you get approx £5 per week (ie £260 per year) more state pension.
If you live in retirement for 20 years you are paying £800 to get back £5,200. And of course it's triple locked.
Once you get your forecast, ring the Future Pension Service Helpline on 0800 731 0175 and they will talk it through with you.
I did it yesterday - it took 75 mins for them to answer - but the person who did was brilliant - highly intelligent and knew everything.
If you have retired early or just not worked for certain periods this literally may be one of the most important things you ever do.
Sold off council houses at a discount;
Kept the MIRAS housing subsidy going as long as she could; and
Never exposed farners to the free market.
She was bourgeouis to her bones.
You could conceivably argue the health service should be based on conscription - everyone at the age of 18 must do 2 years compulsory national service either in the armed forces or one of the services like nursing or police, but that would be a big leap
from today.
Re point 3) Doesn't that still apply to books you sell to the EU?
Anyway, I am glad your business is doing well.
PS Why is "Some Unusual Engines" by L J K Setright so expensive? I used to have a copy and lent it to someone, never got it back. Whenever I look to get a replacement copy it's always well over £100, so I demur.
We keep hearing for example that there are more people applying for nursing courses than places so seems to me the scarcity is artificial. We also have more nurses than ever before currently which suggests that despite the furore about vacancies there are plenty still wanting to be a nurse.