It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
You mean future public sector DB pensions should be paid for by a tax on my private sector DB pension that is now in payment? I am not sure I can see the logic in that.
What I would support is unified tax (and NI) rates on all income: earned, dividend, savings, rental income, self-employed, and regardless of the age of the recipient.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
You mean future public sector DB pensions should be paid for by a tax on my private sector DB pension that is now in payment? I am not sure I can see the logic in that.
What I would support is unified tax (and NI) rates on all income: earned, dividend, savings, rental income, self-employed, and regardless of the age of the recipient.
No, out of a tax on other public sector DB pensions at source.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
Pensioners receive the triple locked pension guarantee, which nobody dare abolish. Looking after over-65s accounts for the bulk of social care (i.e. the majority of local government spending) and half of the entire NHS budget. The average pensioner household, after allowing for housing costs, has a higher disposable income than the average working household, and thanks to the aforementioned triple lock the gap can and will do nothing but widen. A quarter of all households headed by a pensioner have assets in excess of a million pounds. Why do you think it is that age is the single most reliable indicator of voting intention?
One more fact: research carried out after the 2017 election suggested that, accounting for demography and relative propensity to vote, a third of the electorate are pensioners and a full half of all active voters are over 55. That will include quite a lot of poorer people still in rented accommodation, but perhaps two-thirds of that vast chunk of the electorate will be owner-occupiers - outright or in the final years of their mortgages. The older ones will be in receipt of their state pensions already and want to make sure the triple lock stays in place (and a large fraction of those will also be benefiting from older-style final salary occupational pensions that are simply no longer available to the current workforce.) The younger ones will be benefiting from the triple lock soon and will have a similar interest - and are also likely to have very aged parents from whom they expect to receive a huge, life-changing property inheritance in the near future.
You can't make pensions in payment less generous, and nor can you ramp property taxes or death duties, because this immense cohort of voters will rebel. They expect their pension guarantees to be upheld, they expect to pass on their estates intact to their offspring when they die, and they absolutely will not tolerate being asked to pay for anything (because "we paid our taxes!", after all.) They are an immense burden on the tottering state, which can only afford to support them by taxing productive businesses and productive workers to death. And I'm sorry, but, contrary to what one may sometimes read in the Daily Express, there ain't £372bn in savings to be found from making LGBTQIA+ diversity officers redundant and cutting housing benefits to workshy families with 23 children.
In short, we can't cut spending on older people and we can't extract more from them in taxes, because anyone who tries to do that will be voted out. The asset wealth and retirement incomes of the better-off elderly, and the inheritances of their heirs, can only be paid for by tax rises and spending cuts in other areas. Which is why, simultaneously, taxation as a share of GDP is at levels last seen in the 1950s and record numbers of poorer people, most of them in working households, are now having to queue up to beg for handouts at food banks. We are completely and impossibly stuck.
History will come to tell us I think a few things.
Labour should have voted for David over Ed. Keir Starmer should have stood in 2015 and Jeremy Corbyn should have not been given the votes to get through.
It was good that Johnson beat Corbyn. Johnson should have left straight after. The Tories should have chosen Rishi over Truss.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
You mean future public sector DB pensions should be paid for by a tax on my private sector DB pension that is now in payment? I am not sure I can see the logic in that.
What I would support is unified tax (and NI) rates on all income: earned, dividend, savings, rental income, self-employed, and regardless of the age of the recipient.
No, out of a tax on other public sector DB pensions at source.
Er... if you can fund public sector DB pensions by taxing DB pensions aren't you magicking up money? Isn't that a bit like trying to power an electricity generator by a motor running on the generated electricity?
I made it to Tréguier, the next stop on the pilgrimage, late yesterday, just in time to get dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel. Then went straight to bed. I was pretty knackered after another long walk, in pretty filthy weather
It rained for about half the day, and got really heavy in the last hour or so of the walk. I must have looked quite a sorry sight trudging along in the rain; five people stopped to offer me a lift during that last hour!
Today I’ve had a shorter walk to Guingamp, about eighteen miles, but felt rather tired again. I’m not sure if that’s just general fatigue after my fortnight’s exertions, or because of how tough yesterday was, but I was quite slow today
I booked the only AirBnb apartment that had a washing machine as I was dangerously short of clean clothes. It’s a tiny studio flat, but the location is amazing
This is my view from the window; the Norte Dame Basilica of Bon-Secours. I think it’s close enough to spit on!
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
Pensioners receive the triple locked pension guarantee, which nobody dare abolish. Looking after over-65s accounts for the bulk of social care (i.e. the majority of local government spending) and half of the entire NHS budget. The average pensioner household, after allowing for housing costs, has a higher disposable income than the average working household, and thanks to the aforementioned triple lock the gap can and will do nothing but widen. A quarter of all households headed by a pensioner have assets in excess of a million pounds. Why do you think it is that age is the single most reliable indicator of voting intention?
One more fact: research carried out after the 2017 election suggested that, accounting for demography and relative propensity to vote, a third of the electorate are pensioners and a full half of all active voters are over 55. That will include quite a lot of poorer people still in rented accommodation, but perhaps two-thirds of that vast chunk of the electorate will be owner-occupiers - outright or in the final years of their mortgages. The older ones will be in receipt of their state pensions already and want to make sure the triple lock stays in place (and a large fraction of those will also be benefiting from older-style final salary occupational pensions that are simply no longer available to the current workforce.) The younger ones will be benefiting from the triple lock soon and will have a similar interest - and are also likely to have very aged parents from whom they expect to receive a huge, life-changing property inheritance in the near future.
You can't make pensions in payment less generous, and nor can you ramp property taxes or death duties, because this immense cohort of voters will rebel. They expect their pension guarantees to be upheld, they expect to pass on their estates intact to their offspring when they die, and they absolutely will not tolerate being asked to pay for anything (because "we paid our taxes!", after all.) They are an immense burden on the tottering state, which can only afford to support them by taxing productive businesses and productive workers to death. And I'm sorry, but, contrary to what one may sometimes read in the Daily Express, there ain't £372bn in savings to be found from making LGBTQIA+ diversity officers redundant and cutting housing benefits to workshy families with 23 children.
In short, we can't cut spending on older people and we can't extract more from them in taxes, because anyone who tries to do that will be voted out. The asset wealth and retirement incomes of the better-off elderly, and the inheritances of their heirs, can only be paid for by tax rises and spending cuts in other areas. Which is why, simultaneously, taxation as a share of GDP is at levels last seen in the 1950s and record numbers of poorer people, most of them in working households, are now having to queue up to beg for handouts at food banks. We are completely and impossibly stuck.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
Besides, aren't NHS admin costs relatively low for a health system? Partly because it's quite a simple system really, but also because we are too comfortable with clinical staff doing their own admin.
If there were still meaningful painless spending cuts to be had after the last decade and a half, that would be a scandal, sure. Especially given all the painful ones we've had. But nobody has pointed them out convincingly in detail. Which makes me suspect they're not there.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
You mean future public sector DB pensions should be paid for by a tax on my private sector DB pension that is now in payment? I am not sure I can see the logic in that.
What I would support is unified tax (and NI) rates on all income: earned, dividend, savings, rental income, self-employed, and regardless of the age of the recipient.
No, out of a tax on other public sector DB pensions at source.
Er... if you can fund public sector DB pensions by taxing DB pensions aren't you magicking up money? Isn't that a bit like trying to power an electricity generator by a motor running on the generated electricity?
Think of it more along the lines of a wealth transfer, essentially I'd just stick a 30% surcharge on all public sector DB recipients.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
Sorry, the term "public sector pensions" means nothing. Are you talking about local Government pensions into which both employers and employees contribute or those pensions where the employee doesn't contribute or civil service pensions?
In the hunt for @Luckyguy1983's £150 billion, isn't that another drop in the ocean? I suppose we could stop paying our debt interest payments but I suspect that won't end well. Defaulting on debt isn't a very British thing to do, is it?
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
She has a millwall personality that is totally incompatible with high office. Reaganism without Reagan, or the dollar, in a period of rapidly rising interest rates was political insanity.
Oh, also should add: “without a democratic mandate”
She had a necklace though. So there's that, on the upside.
Liz Truss showed what would have happened if we'd had Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. Thank God we dodged that bullet.
You mean he would have lasted a month before being replaced? Probably by Starmer or Benn.
That was, after all, the plan of the PLP*.
*Well that's what I think, anyway.
Are the rules different when they're in government? The PLP demonstrated themselves incapable of carrying out a desire to replace Corbyn when in opposition...
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
Besides, aren't NHS admin costs relatively low for a health system? Partly because it's quite a simple system really, but also because we are too comfortable with clinical staff doing their own admin.
If there were still meaningful painless spending cuts to be had after the last decade and a half, that would be a scandal, sure. Especially given all the painful ones we've had. But nobody has pointed them out convincingly in detail. Which makes me suspect they're not there.
They were pre-COVID but there's been an explosion in non-clinical staff since late 2019, a lot of these people do nothing really but are now impossible to get rid of. I think it's probably a £4-5bn saving. In any case any cuts to the NHS would be reinvested into clinical staff given the 6m backlog of operations and procedures.
One area we could make a saving is begin enforcing health bonds and deposits for suspected health tourists. But even that's probably only £3-4bn per year. I'm not sure there's more "easy" savings in the NHS. If anything the pharma industry is right and the NHS drug tax is going to have to fall soon because it's hurting investment in UK pharma.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
Sorry, the term "public sector pensions" means nothing. Are you talking about local Government pensions into which both employers and employees contribute or those pensions where the employee doesn't contribute or civil service pensions?
In the hunt for @Luckyguy1983's £150 billion, isn't that another drop in the ocean? I suppose we could stop paying our debt interest payments but I suspect that won't end well. Defaulting on debt isn't a very British thing to do, is it?
Specifically DB pensions, I didn't mean DC ones or even non contributory DC. DB pension costs need to be chopped by 30-40% and a surcharge would do that. Sucks for those who get them but really there's actually only a few million of them.
History will come to tell us I think a few things.
Labour should have voted for David over Ed. Keir Starmer should have stood in 2015 and Jeremy Corbyn should have not been given the votes to get through.
It was good that Johnson beat Corbyn. Johnson should have left straight after. The Tories should have chosen Rishi over Truss.
Unless David could have found someway of stopping SLAB getting eviscerated by the SNP post-indyref, I'm not sure he would have won the 2015 GE.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
You mean future public sector DB pensions should be paid for by a tax on my private sector DB pension that is now in payment? I am not sure I can see the logic in that.
What I would support is unified tax (and NI) rates on all income: earned, dividend, savings, rental income, self-employed, and regardless of the age of the recipient.
No, out of a tax on other public sector DB pensions at source.
Er... if you can fund public sector DB pensions by taxing DB pensions aren't you magicking up money? Isn't that a bit like trying to power an electricity generator by a motor running on the generated electricity?
Think of it more along the lines of a wealth transfer, essentially I'd just stick a 30% surcharge on all public sector DB recipients.
Ok - and in the real world?
No government would ever b able to get your proposal through - every public service sector would be on strike and it would make the 70s look like a period of industrial harmony.
Switching new public sector employees to DC pensions might be achievable... but public sector salaries would have to increase to make them competitive.
No, we need to equalise income tax across all income types (and reduce it in time) and tax wealth.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
You mean future public sector DB pensions should be paid for by a tax on my private sector DB pension that is now in payment? I am not sure I can see the logic in that.
What I would support is unified tax (and NI) rates on all income: earned, dividend, savings, rental income, self-employed, and regardless of the age of the recipient.
No, out of a tax on other public sector DB pensions at source.
Er... if you can fund public sector DB pensions by taxing DB pensions aren't you magicking up money? Isn't that a bit like trying to power an electricity generator by a motor running on the generated electricity?
Think of it more along the lines of a wealth transfer, essentially I'd just stick a 30% surcharge on all public sector DB recipients.
Ok - and in the real world?
No government would ever b able to get your proposal through - every public service sector would be on strike and it would make the 70s look like a period of industrial harmony.
Switching new public sector employees to DC pensions might be achievable... but public sector salaries would have to increase to make them competitive.
No, we need to equalise income tax across all income types (and reduce it in time) and tax wealth.
Yeah and eventually they'll all go back to work because you know, they need to eat and pay their mortgages. The UK needs to be ready for this because DB pensions are bankrupting the nation for a few million beneficiaries.
I made it to Tréguier, the next stop on the pilgrimage, late yesterday, just in time to get dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel. Then went straight to bed. I was pretty knackered after another long walk, in pretty filthy weather
It rained for about half the day, and got really heavy in the last hour or so of the walk. I must have looked quite a sorry sight trudging along in the rain; five people stopped to offer me a lift during that last hour!
Today I’ve had a shorter walk to Guingamp, about eighteen miles, but felt rather tired again. I’m not sure if that’s just general fatigue after my fortnight’s exertions, or because of how tough yesterday was, but I was quite slow today
I booked the only AirBnb apartment that had a washing machine as I was dangerously short of clean clothes. It’s a tiny studio flat, but the location is amazing
This is my view from the window; the Norte Dame Basilica of Bon-Secours. I think it’s close enough to spit on!
I’m very envious of your adventure. I’ve agreed in principle that my teenage son and I will go on a magical mystery tour after his GCSEs: set off in some random direction and see where serendipity takes us. Looking forward to it.
Liz Truss showed what would have happened if we'd had Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. Thank God we dodged that bullet.
You mean he would have lasted a month before being replaced? Probably by Starmer or Benn.
That was, after all, the plan of the PLP*.
*Well that's what I think, anyway.
Are the rules different when they're in government? The PLP demonstrated themselves incapable of carrying out a desire to replace Corbyn when in opposition...
Correct. Truss had to resign because she would have been no-confidenced otherwise. The PLP issuing a no-confidence in the Absolute Boy by comparison has no effect on whether he remained leader or not.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
Sorry, the term "public sector pensions" means nothing. Are you talking about local Government pensions into which both employers and employees contribute or those pensions where the employee doesn't contribute or civil service pensions?
In the hunt for @Luckyguy1983's £150 billion, isn't that another drop in the ocean? I suppose we could stop paying our debt interest payments but I suspect that won't end well. Defaulting on debt isn't a very British thing to do, is it?
Specifically DB pensions, I didn't mean DC ones or even non contributory DC. DB pension costs need to be chopped by 30-40% and a surcharge would do that. Sucks for those who get them but really there's actually only a few million of them.
You can't just slap a 30-40% surcharge on the retirement income of one sector. It would be like saying anyone working for an investment bank is going to be paying 80/85% higher rate ICT instead of 40/45%.
I agree the issue needs a solution but it's needs to be implementable.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
Sorry, the term "public sector pensions" means nothing. Are you talking about local Government pensions into which both employers and employees contribute or those pensions where the employee doesn't contribute or civil service pensions?
In the hunt for @Luckyguy1983's £150 billion, isn't that another drop in the ocean? I suppose we could stop paying our debt interest payments but I suspect that won't end well. Defaulting on debt isn't a very British thing to do, is it?
Specifically DB pensions, I didn't mean DC ones or even non contributory DC. DB pension costs need to be chopped by 30-40% and a surcharge would do that. Sucks for those who get them but really there's actually only a few million of them.
You can't just slap a 30-40% surcharge on the retirement income of one sector. It would be like saying anyone working for an investment bank is going to be paying 80/85% higher rate ICT instead of 40/45%.
I agree the issue needs a solution but it's needs to be implementable.
Sure you can, we have a special rate of CGT for property investment and a banking sector corporation tax surcharge of 5%.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
In order to do that we would also need to have the age structure of the population that we had in 2000. To give an idea, look at these population pyramids:
As you can see, the growth in population is most marked in the older age ranges. The number of working age population has been mostly static.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
That faction had their chance and f*cked it up royally under Truss. Did you miss that?
I have no idea how the 'point' that you're doing your best to express has anything to do with what I wrote.
Well, I may have misunderstood what meant by 'internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation' (in which case I apologise).
I assume you think there are a number of Tory MPs who feel that, despite the current national finances, we should be cutting taxes to encourage growth (the Truss plan). If my assumption is right, my earlier point still stands. Truss failed - catastrophically.
Truss failed politically. She certainly didn't fail economically, as her supply-side reforms were never enacted. To try to argue otherwise is either being stupid or assuming your readers are. You should get with the pro-growth programme, Starmer has managed it.
Dude, she couldn’t count.
Fatal for a politician.
We can agree that she didn't sell her reforms, and that she fatally underestimated the forces ranged against them. That doesn’t mean that they were not valid - even vital reforms.
Thing is, Truss, or at least, Truss’s ideology might have worked, had she (or someone else, similarly committed) won the leadership in 2016 - or more realistically, 2019.
Those of us who don’t want to see the state eviscerated, can thank our lucky charms.
Eviscerate the State? Do me a favour. I'd be happy with removing its KFC charge card and telling it to jog around the block.
A lot of the increase in state spending (%GDP) since the Blair years is down to changing demographics (health & social care) and the pensions triple-lock. The triple-lock can't go because no party supporting that would get elected and, short of euthanasia, there's no solution to the demographic problem.
Better to face the fact that the tax take as a %GDP has to grow and tax some of the vast wealth that exists in the country.
Also, let's not try to pretend that money spent on, say, health care is sucked out of the economy. It isn't, it's recycled straight back into the economy.
Making public sector pensions self funding would be a big step forwards, all DB schemes must be funded by a tax on current DB pensions. We need to call time on paying people tens of thousands per year out of current spending to sit at home and do nothing, whatever promises were made at the time.
Sorry, the term "public sector pensions" means nothing. Are you talking about local Government pensions into which both employers and employees contribute or those pensions where the employee doesn't contribute or civil service pensions?
In the hunt for @Luckyguy1983's £150 billion, isn't that another drop in the ocean? I suppose we could stop paying our debt interest payments but I suspect that won't end well. Defaulting on debt isn't a very British thing to do, is it?
Specifically DB pensions, I didn't mean DC ones or even non contributory DC. DB pension costs need to be chopped by 30-40% and a surcharge would do that. Sucks for those who get them but really there's actually only a few million of them.
You can't just slap a 30-40% surcharge on the retirement income of one sector. It would be like saying anyone working for an investment bank is going to be paying 80/85% higher rate ICT instead of 40/45%.
I agree the issue needs a solution but it's needs to be implementable.
Sure you can, we have a special rate of CGT for property investment and a banking sector corporation tax surcharge of 5%.
Well sure we have different VAT rates too but the point is they apply to all individuals.
To slap a 30-40% charge on public sector DB pensions is effectively the Government reneging on its contract with those employees.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
If anything, one of the problems with the NHS is a lack of administrative staff. Admin has been culled to the bone, which has the perverse outcome that expensively trained and well-paid clinical scientists like my missus have to waste their valuable time doing basic HR tasks, which an administrator could do far more effectively and cheaply, instead of doing the job they are trained for.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
If anything, one of the problems with the NHS is a lack of administrative staff. Admin has been culled to the bone, which has the perverse outcome that expensively trained and well-paid clinical scientists like my missus have to waste their valuable time doing basic HR tasks, which an administrator could do far more effectively and cheaply, instead of doing the job they are trained for.
Yep. At £120k, I can be a very expensive secretary!
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
If anything, one of the problems with the NHS is a lack of administrative staff. Admin has been culled to the bone, which has the perverse outcome that expensively trained and well-paid clinical scientists like my missus have to waste their valuable time doing basic HR tasks, which an administrator could do far more effectively and cheaply, instead of doing the job they are trained for.
Yep. At £120k, I can be a very expensive secretary!
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
Where do the savings come from?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I have not suggested that 'old people benefits' should be given unjustified protection. But the idea behind shrinking the state isn't just to be mean, it is a reallocation of resources and spending power from the unproductive to the productive part of the economy. It would be accompanied by cuts to taxes that would be aimed at radically increasing taxable activity, meaning higher tax revenues in the long term.
I don’t think the line up here is v good is it? I’m not watching it, anyway.
The Commonwealth is a great way to foster educational, democratic, judicial and cultural links, but it likely needs a big bung from the UK to make it a bit more relevant globally.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
If anything, one of the problems with the NHS is a lack of administrative staff. Admin has been culled to the bone, which has the perverse outcome that expensively trained and well-paid clinical scientists like my missus have to waste their valuable time doing basic HR tasks, which an administrator could do far more effectively and cheaply, instead of doing the job they are trained for.
Yep. At £120k, I can be a very expensive secretary!
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
In order to do that we would also need to have the age structure of the population that we had in 2000. To give an idea, look at these population pyramids:
As you can see, the growth in population is most marked in the older age ranges. The number of working age population has been mostly static.
A valuable illustration. Over 65s already up from 15.7% to 19.7% of the total population since the turn of the century, with an outsized cohort of people born in the 1960s due to retire from the late 2020s onwards - all of whom will also be expecting inflation-proofed state pensions, free healthcare for their increasingly complex needs, and most of whom will also be expecting to inherit hugely valuable houses tax-free.
Meanwhile, the proportion of the population aged under five has contracted significantly, because punitive taxation and stratospheric housing costs are actively preventing family formation. The future is one of an elderly vote growing continually in its electoral power, control of resources and demands for more money, propped up by a narrowing and increasingly impoverished base of put-upon workers.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
If anything, one of the problems with the NHS is a lack of administrative staff. Admin has been culled to the bone, which has the perverse outcome that expensively trained and well-paid clinical scientists like my missus have to waste their valuable time doing basic HR tasks, which an administrator could do far more effectively and cheaply, instead of doing the job they are trained for.
Yep. At £120k, I can be a very expensive secretary!
This concert has been carefully planned around love, unity, inclusion and to project the King as Head of the Commonwealth in order to cement him and reunify the Commonwealth around him accordingly, with British soft power floating all around it.
The theme runs through every aspect of the concert.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
If anything, one of the problems with the NHS is a lack of administrative staff. Admin has been culled to the bone, which has the perverse outcome that expensively trained and well-paid clinical scientists like my missus have to waste their valuable time doing basic HR tasks, which an administrator could do far more effectively and cheaply, instead of doing the job they are trained for.
*The* problem, which seems to be a kind of British disease, is a refusal to make capital investment. The result is more people, doing things at a lower productivity.
I don’t think the line up here is v good is it? I’m not watching it, anyway.
The Commonwealth is a great way to foster educational, democratic, judicial and cultural links, but it likely needs a big bung from the UK to make it a bit more relevant globally.
Ringfence the international development budget to only the Commonwealth?
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
Where do the savings come from?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I have not suggested that 'old people benefits' should be given unjustified protection. But the idea behind shrinking the state isn't just to be mean, it is a reallocation of resources and spending power from the unproductive to the productive part of the economy. It would be accompanied by cuts to taxes that would be aimed at radically increasing taxable activity, meaning higher tax revenues in the long term.
Out of interest, why do you think cuts to tax would 'radically increase taxable activity'?
I don’t think the line up here is v good is it? I’m not watching it, anyway.
The Commonwealth is a great way to foster educational, democratic, judicial and cultural links, but it likely needs a big bung from the UK to make it a bit more relevant globally.
It's much better than I thought. Better than the Platinum Jubilee one and, strangely, catchy, positive and optimistic. Really fun.
And I agree we should fund it and promote it more. It's a huge asset.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
In order to do that we would also need to have the age structure of the population that we had in 2000. To give an idea, look at these population pyramids:
As you can see, the growth in population is most marked in the older age ranges. The number of working age population has been mostly static.
A valuable illustration. Over 65s already up from 15.7% to 19.7% of the total population since the turn of the century, with an outsized cohort of people born in the 1960s due to retire from the late 2020s onwards - all of whom will also be expecting inflation-proofed state pensions, free healthcare for their increasingly complex needs, and most of whom will also be expecting to inherit hugely valuable houses tax-free.
Meanwhile, the proportion of the population aged under five has contracted significantly, because punitive taxation and stratospheric housing costs are actively preventing family formation. The future is one of an elderly vote growing continually in its electoral power, control of resources and demands for more money, propped up by a narrowing and increasingly impoverished base of put-upon workers.
Yes, between the end of the baby boom in 1964 and the 1980's there was a particular drop in numbers of children. Fortunately that age range was significantly supplemented by immigration.
Not a unique problem to our country. Wealthy and middle income countries are all rapidly greying populations. Look at South Korea for example:
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
Where do the savings come from?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I have not suggested that 'old people benefits' should be given unjustified protection. But the idea behind shrinking the state isn't just to be mean, it is a reallocation of resources and spending power from the unproductive to the productive part of the economy. It would be accompanied by cuts to taxes that would be aimed at radically increasing taxable activity, meaning higher tax revenues in the long term.
Reallocating resources from unproductive to productive parts of the economy essentially involves turning a system geared towards property speculation and servicing the needs and wishes of old people into one that stamps on house price inflation by greatly increasing supply, whilst placing greater emphasis on property taxes to pay society's gargantuan health and social care bills, liberating the fruits of labour (earned incomes and corporate profits) to be spent on investment and consumption.
The obvious problem is that minted elderly homeowners and their heirs constitute such a large fraction of the electorate that nobody will dare to do this. The nanosecond any politician proposes to slash income and corporation taxes and fillet spending on health and pensions to compensate - or, alternatively, keep spending up by imposing heavy taxation on property and other assets - the grey vote will stampede to the other guy who promises to keep things exactly as they are. Thus, change is impossible.
The current dispensation benefits too many people, and will therefore remain in place until the numbers of the struggling and destitute in the country are so large that they can finally outvote the wealthy retired folk and their heirs. That ain't happening any time soon.
This is basically a multi-million pound advert for the Commonwealth, on a global stage.
The Commonwealth where most members are republics? That Commonwealth?
Right. Why wouldn't it still be possible to be an advert for the Commonwealth despite that? The King is the Head of it, so has an opportunity to bring up and promote the Commonwealth at events, including the republics. I don't know what's hard to grasp about that.
What will be interesting is whether William follows in his place - the Queen apparently personally lobbied for Charles to succeed her, and that might not work again. But though the lack of a real mission is part of why the Commonwealth is harmless and evidently appealing gor new joiners, and now not all have had a British connection in the past, what route will they go for a Head if they don't go with William? Just have no head by rotating presidencies?
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
In order to do that we would also need to have the age structure of the population that we had in 2000. To give an idea, look at these population pyramids:
As you can see, the growth in population is most marked in the older age ranges. The number of working age population has been mostly static.
A valuable illustration. Over 65s already up from 15.7% to 19.7% of the total population since the turn of the century, with an outsized cohort of people born in the 1960s due to retire from the late 2020s onwards - all of whom will also be expecting inflation-proofed state pensions, free healthcare for their increasingly complex needs, and most of whom will also be expecting to inherit hugely valuable houses tax-free.
Meanwhile, the proportion of the population aged under five has contracted significantly, because punitive taxation and stratospheric housing costs are actively preventing family formation. The future is one of an elderly vote growing continually in its electoral power, control of resources and demands for more money, propped up by a narrowing and increasingly impoverished base of put-upon workers.
Yes, between the end of the baby boom in 1964 and the 1980's there was a particular drop in numbers of children. Fortunately that age range was significantly supplemented by immigration.
Not a unique problem to our country. Wealthy and middle income countries are all rapidly greying populations. Look at South Korea for example:
Not so much a population pyramid as a skittle, and we know what happens to skittles.
Thank you for the responses and likes to my article yesterday. The post-match debrief is backstage: if you or anybody else wants to join it please let me know and I will add you. You can post questions there and I will be online in that backstage area between 7pm and 8pm BST on Tuesday March 9th to answer them live: you are cordially invited. IRL I would bring cake, but alas we cannot do that online...
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
Where do the savings come from?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I have not suggested that 'old people benefits' should be given unjustified protection. But the idea behind shrinking the state isn't just to be mean, it is a reallocation of resources and spending power from the unproductive to the productive part of the economy. It would be accompanied by cuts to taxes that would be aimed at radically increasing taxable activity, meaning higher tax revenues in the long term.
Out of interest, why do you think cuts to tax would 'radically increase taxable activity'?
Because that has proven to be the case in the past. Why do you think ROI has 12.5% CT - because they want to get less Corporation Tax or more? The UK also got more Corporation Tax when Osborne cut it.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
Where do the savings come from?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I have not suggested that 'old people benefits' should be given unjustified protection. But the idea behind shrinking the state isn't just to be mean, it is a reallocation of resources and spending power from the unproductive to the productive part of the economy. It would be accompanied by cuts to taxes that would be aimed at radically increasing taxable activity, meaning higher tax revenues in the long term.
Reallocating resources from unproductive to productive parts of the economy essentially involves turning a system geared towards property speculation and servicing the needs and wishes of old people into one that stamps on house price inflation by greatly increasing supply, whilst placing greater emphasis on property taxes to pay society's gargantuan health and social care bills, liberating the fruits of labour (earned incomes and corporate profits) to be spent on investment and consumption.
The obvious problem is that minted elderly homeowners and their heirs constitute such a large fraction of the electorate that nobody will dare to do this. The nanosecond any politician proposes to slash income and corporation taxes and fillet spending on health and pensions to compensate - or, alternatively, keep spending up by imposing heavy taxation on property and other assets - the grey vote will stampede to the other guy who promises to keep things exactly as they are. Thus, change is impossible.
The current dispensation benefits too many people, and will therefore remain in place until the numbers of the struggling and destitute in the country are so large that they can finally outvote the wealthy retired folk and their heirs. That ain't happening any time soon.
Is that necessarily true, or is the inflated value of housing just like the 'inflated' value of gold - ie the value actually hasn't changed, it's just that all around it has been debased and lost its value.
Thank you for the responses and likes to my article yesterday. The post-match debrief is backstage: if you or anybody else wants to join it please let me know and I will add you. You can post questions there and I will be online in that backstage area between 7pm and 8pm BST on Tuesday March 9th to answer them live: you are cordially invited. IRL I would bring cake, but alas we cannot do that online...
Thank you. It was a great piece.
I'm not sure what I'm doing on Tuesday evening but I'll let you know.
I don’t think the line up here is v good is it? I’m not watching it, anyway.
The Commonwealth is a great way to foster educational, democratic, judicial and cultural links, but it likely needs a big bung from the UK to make it a bit more relevant globally.
Ringfence the international development budget to only the Commonwealth?
I would not, I think, oppose that or something like it.
Thank you for the responses and likes to my article yesterday. The post-match debrief is backstage: if you or anybody else wants to join it please let me know and I will add you. You can post questions there and I will be online in that backstage area between 7pm and 8pm BST on Tuesday March 9th to answer them live: you are cordially invited. IRL I would bring cake, but alas we cannot do that online...
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
Where do the savings come from?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I have not suggested that 'old people benefits' should be given unjustified protection. But the idea behind shrinking the state isn't just to be mean, it is a reallocation of resources and spending power from the unproductive to the productive part of the economy. It would be accompanied by cuts to taxes that would be aimed at radically increasing taxable activity, meaning higher tax revenues in the long term.
Out of interest, why do you think cuts to tax would 'radically increase taxable activity'?
Because that has proven to be the case in the past. Why do you think ROI has 12.5% CT - because they want to get less Corporation Tax or more? The UK also got more Corporation Tax when Osborne cut it.
Oh god...
1. ROI is a small English-speaking economy in the EU that can attract business to headquarter there by offering a reduced CT rate. The UK is a completely different kettle of fish on so many levels; copying the ROI is not an option. 2. The 'Osborne CT cuts led to increased CT take' myth is debunked herehttps://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-did-cutting-corporation-tax-raise-money
I don’t think it’s possible to shrink the state back toward growth.
Demographics and politics simply forbid it.
We’ve reached the end of the neo-liberal revolution and for Britain in particular it’s delivered this kind of high tax, public squalor, low productivity nightmare.
As the Irishman said, you wouldn’t want to start from here.
No, the only way is growth. Growth through investment. Public and private. Certain in capital, but conceivably in people too.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
Where do the savings come from?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I have not suggested that 'old people benefits' should be given unjustified protection. But the idea behind shrinking the state isn't just to be mean, it is a reallocation of resources and spending power from the unproductive to the productive part of the economy. It would be accompanied by cuts to taxes that would be aimed at radically increasing taxable activity, meaning higher tax revenues in the long term.
Reallocating resources from unproductive to productive parts of the economy essentially involves turning a system geared towards property speculation and servicing the needs and wishes of old people into one that stamps on house price inflation by greatly increasing supply, whilst placing greater emphasis on property taxes to pay society's gargantuan health and social care bills, liberating the fruits of labour (earned incomes and corporate profits) to be spent on investment and consumption.
The obvious problem is that minted elderly homeowners and their heirs constitute such a large fraction of the electorate that nobody will dare to do this. The nanosecond any politician proposes to slash income and corporation taxes and fillet spending on health and pensions to compensate - or, alternatively, keep spending up by imposing heavy taxation on property and other assets - the grey vote will stampede to the other guy who promises to keep things exactly as they are. Thus, change is impossible.
The current dispensation benefits too many people, and will therefore remain in place until the numbers of the struggling and destitute in the country are so large that they can finally outvote the wealthy retired folk and their heirs. That ain't happening any time soon.
Is that necessarily true, or is the inflated value of housing just like the 'inflated' value of gold - ie the value actually hasn't changed, it's just that all around it has been debased and lost its value.
It might have something to do with that, but I think that the most important factor is that property has been commoditised: it's viewed as much or more as an investment and store of wealth than as somewhere to live. And it's small wonder that this is the case when the creation of fresh housing supply through construction continually runs behind the growth in demand as the population expands.
Thus we find ourselves in the situation where not only have earned incomes stagnated for a decade and a half whilst property prices have recovered all their losses from the GFC and then continued to shoot into the stratosphere, but also the value of all residential property in the UK is now three times as great as the total market capitalisation of our publicly listed companies. The equivalent ratio in the US is 1:1. And people still wonder out loud why our productivity growth is so abysmal.
This is basically a multi-million pound advert for the Commonwealth, on a global stage.
He won't say it, but I think Charles sees it as his particular mission to welcome Ireland into the Commonwealth.
The presence of the Taoiseach, President of Ireland and Sinn Fein First Minister-elect at the Coronation is a small step towards that goal, as will the coming State visit.
The possibility of the Royals successfully pulling off a charm offensive to Ireland that helps to build a more positive relationship between Britain and Ireland - which Commonwealth membership would be a strong symbolic signal - is one of the few things that the Royal family could actually achieve.
I thought it was interesting from a psephological point of view. Don't think I've seen such a big discrepancy before.
It's because LD and Lab did a deal and didn't stand against each other.
It's good politics but stinks from a democratic point of view. Lab will be making decisions about my ward but didn't even stand here. It feels like the SNP voting on matters relating to England.
This is basically a multi-million pound advert for the Commonwealth, on a global stage.
He won't say it, but I think Charles sees it as his particular mission to welcome Ireland into the Commonwealth.
The presence of the Taoiseach, President of Ireland and Sinn Fein First Minister-elect at the Coronation is a small step towards that goal, as will the coming State visit.
The possibility of the Royals successfully pulling off a charm offensive to Ireland that helps to build a more positive relationship between Britain and Ireland - which Commonwealth membership would be a strong symbolic signal - is one of the few things that the Royal family could actually achieve.
That would be a coup. But it’s difficult to see how why the Irish Republic would join the Commonwealth. Too much history in the way.
I would prefer it if we strengthened the British-Irish council.
This is basically a multi-million pound advert for the Commonwealth, on a global stage.
He won't say it, but I think Charles sees it as his particular mission to welcome Ireland into the Commonwealth.
The presence of the Taoiseach, President of Ireland and Sinn Fein First Minister-elect at the Coronation is a small step towards that goal, as will the coming State visit.
The possibility of the Royals successfully pulling off a charm offensive to Ireland that helps to build a more positive relationship between Britain and Ireland - which Commonwealth membership would be a strong symbolic signal - is one of the few things that the Royal family could actually achieve.
I haven’t heard that suggestion, before.
What’s in it for ireland, joining the commonwealth?
Presumably, it would be a non-starter for SF? Is there any appetite in FG or FF?
This is basically a multi-million pound advert for the Commonwealth, on a global stage.
He won't say it, but I think Charles sees it as his particular mission to welcome Ireland into the Commonwealth.
The presence of the Taoiseach, President of Ireland and Sinn Fein First Minister-elect at the Coronation is a small step towards that goal, as will the coming State visit.
The possibility of the Royals successfully pulling off a charm offensive to Ireland that helps to build a more positive relationship between Britain and Ireland - which Commonwealth membership would be a strong symbolic signal - is one of the few things that the Royal family could actually achieve.
I think that will be difficult with a Sinn Fein Government on the way, and all the history.
This is basically a multi-million pound advert for the Commonwealth, on a global stage.
He won't say it, but I think Charles sees it as his particular mission to welcome Ireland into the Commonwealth.
The presence of the Taoiseach, President of Ireland and Sinn Fein First Minister-elect at the Coronation is a small step towards that goal, as will the coming State visit.
The possibility of the Royals successfully pulling off a charm offensive to Ireland that helps to build a more positive relationship between Britain and Ireland - which Commonwealth membership would be a strong symbolic signal - is one of the few things that the Royal family could actually achieve.
That would be a coup. But it’s difficult to see how why the Irish Republic would join the Commonwealth. Too much history in the way.
I would prefer it if we strengthened the British-Irish council.
The difference between the Commonwealth and the British-Irish council is that the latter is a matter for ministers, who don't seem to grasp the importance of the relationship with Ireland, while the Commonwealth is the one thing the Royal family have some influence over, and they seem willing to devote time and effort to the relationship with Ireland.
This Republican is willing to wish them the best of luck, in the knowledge that they'll need it.
This is basically a multi-million pound advert for the Commonwealth, on a global stage.
He won't say it, but I think Charles sees it as his particular mission to welcome Ireland into the Commonwealth.
The presence of the Taoiseach, President of Ireland and Sinn Fein First Minister-elect at the Coronation is a small step towards that goal, as will the coming State visit.
The possibility of the Royals successfully pulling off a charm offensive to Ireland that helps to build a more positive relationship between Britain and Ireland - which Commonwealth membership would be a strong symbolic signal - is one of the few things that the Royal family could actually achieve.
I haven’t heard that suggestion, before.
What’s in it for ireland, joining the commonwealth?
Presumably, it would be a non-starter for SF? Is there any appetite in FG or FF?
Ireland applied to join the French equivalent, on the basis that improving ties with other countries was useful for a wide variety of reasons - economic and diplomatic. Ireland does have a wide diaspora.
FG have shown most interest in reaching out to Unionists in NI, to help ease the way to a United Ireland.
It has occurred to me that whilst unseating Rishi Sunak is a tall (hehe) order, if there's enough internal dissent surrounding growth and taxation, he might be tempted to throw Hunt under a bus.
He could argue that Hunt was brought in to stabilise things, and has done that*, and so now it is time for the next stage, which is a pro-growth plan done properly this time, having set the stage for it. And that that requires a new Chancellor.
Don't think it would wash though. Too obviously a sacking and attempt to save his own skin. I thought sacking Kwarteng and essentially delegating all economic policy to Hunt might have done enough to save Truss, but it didn't.
*never mind if that is true, he could argue it.
All very well, but Rishi is not terribly interested in a pro growth plan. .
Nor was Boris for his premiership until suddenly he is now claimed to have been by his acolytes and he was going to do it before his ousting. And if Lucky is right then Hunt used to be interested in it but then wasn't once appointed.
So if he thought it would be his only option Rishi would suddenly find himself interested in such a plan. He might even be able to sell it if he can say the principle was right it was just incompetently done.
Three problems off the top of my head.
One way of getting the economy growing would be to build more stuff. But as a country, we don't want more stuff built.
Another way to grow the economy would be to import more workers... spot the flaw with that one.
And then there's the whole trade with Eu...(at this point, Romford Constabulary dragged me away from the keyboard for the sake of public order.)
Ultimately, the electorate in general (and the Conservative electorate in particular) are OK with decline, as long as it is gentle and genteel. Deep down, we'd like to be Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton. As a country, we're stuffed as long as we carry on like this, or look for something-for-nothing get rich quick gimmicks, but I don't see the easy sustainable way out.
There isn't one. There's no way to promote productive economic activity over property speculation, or to avoid taxing businesses and earned incomes into oblivion to fund pensions, health and social care, without launching a direct assault on the interests of the grey vote.
There are too many olds, so anyone who does that simply gets rejected at the ballot box. Thus, on we go, circling the plughole.
I couldn't disagree more. We have a corpulent state, gorging itself on public money and ruining the productive part of the economy. Blaming the crinklies for having a marginally better time of it than young people is a distraction - classic divide and rule.
What would you cut?
I would want to drive public spending down (in real terms) to the first Blair premiership levels - as an ambition. So all departments would probably see significant cuts. Within that there are individual programmes and areas of spending that I think are riper for chopping than others, which I can be more detailed about if you're interested?
Specifically which areas would you cut? The biggest increases in spending since Blair has been the NHS, the state pension and public sector defined benefit pensions plus debt interest has gone up from ~£25bn to ~£100bn per year. I think the only other part of government spending that has gone up is defence and that's just barely.
I would be quite comfortable with cutting the NHS. It has far more administrative staff than it seems to have any use for. I also have a personal belief that NICE pays through the nose for the NHS's drugs.
Ok that's one cut, and you're having a laugh about NICE. The NHS has got the most efficient and effective drug buying amongst western countries. It's every other kind of procurement where the NHS is useless.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
I am not proposing that we return to 2010 levels, I am proposing that we return to 2000 levels.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
Ok so you're talking about ~ £250bn in cuts. That's fine but I don't see how you do that without cutting the state pension and debt servicing. The latter is obviously impractical and would require a default and you have previously indicated that cutting old people benefits isn't something you'd do.
Where do the savings come from?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I have not suggested that 'old people benefits' should be given unjustified protection. But the idea behind shrinking the state isn't just to be mean, it is a reallocation of resources and spending power from the unproductive to the productive part of the economy. It would be accompanied by cuts to taxes that would be aimed at radically increasing taxable activity, meaning higher tax revenues in the long term.
Out of interest, why do you think cuts to tax would 'radically increase taxable activity'?
Because that has proven to be the case in the past. Why do you think ROI has 12.5% CT - because they want to get less Corporation Tax or more? The UK also got more Corporation Tax when Osborne cut it.
Oh god...
1. ROI is a small English-speaking economy in the EU that can attract business to headquarter there by offering a reduced CT rate. The UK is a completely different kettle of fish on so many levels; copying the ROI is not an option. 2. The 'Osborne CT cuts led to increased CT take' myth is debunked herehttps://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-did-cutting-corporation-tax-raise-money
It's really quite comedic the vexed pomposity you seem to muster, only back it up by the lamest of sources or just your own utterly baseless pronouncements. Why exactly is the UK economy so different - are we not small? Do we not speak English? Can we not attract businesses to headquarter within the UK? If competition on CT doesn’t attract foreign direct investment, why is it do you think that the US is pushing so hard to eliminate lower rates of CT than its own in the G7?
As for the 'fact check' (surely the most debased media article format in existence these days), it has precisely *zero* content debunking Truss's assertions about Osborne's CT cut, other than reminding us that tax cuts don't take place in a vacuum, which most intelligent people knew anyway.
Thank you for the responses and likes to my article yesterday. The post-match debrief is backstage: if you or anybody else wants to join it please let me know and I will add you. You can post questions there and I will be online in that backstage area between 7pm and 8pm BST on Tuesday March 9th to answer them live: you are cordially invited. IRL I would bring cake, but alas we cannot do that online...
Thank you. It was a great piece.
I'm not sure what I'm doing on Tuesday evening but I'll let you know.
You don't have to be there on Tuesday. I can add you now, you can post any questions or comments at your leisure, and I'll answer them textually Tuesday night.
Comments
What I would support is unified tax (and NI) rates on all income: earned, dividend, savings, rental income, self-employed, and regardless of the age of the recipient.
So that's say £20bn cut, where's the rest going to come from, you're proposing cuts of ca. £150bn to take us back to 2010 levels.
One more fact: research carried out after the 2017 election suggested that, accounting for demography and relative propensity to vote, a third of the electorate are pensioners and a full half of all active voters are over 55. That will include quite a lot of poorer people still in rented accommodation, but perhaps two-thirds of that vast chunk of the electorate will be owner-occupiers - outright or in the final years of their mortgages. The older ones will be in receipt of their state pensions already and want to make sure the triple lock stays in place (and a large fraction of those will also be benefiting from older-style final salary occupational pensions that are simply no longer available to the current workforce.) The younger ones will be benefiting from the triple lock soon and will have a similar interest - and are also likely to have very aged parents from whom they expect to receive a huge, life-changing property inheritance in the near future.
You can't make pensions in payment less generous, and nor can you ramp property taxes or death duties, because this immense cohort of voters will rebel. They expect their pension guarantees to be upheld, they expect to pass on their estates intact to their offspring when they die, and they absolutely will not tolerate being asked to pay for anything (because "we paid our taxes!", after all.) They are an immense burden on the tottering state, which can only afford to support them by taxing productive businesses and productive workers to death. And I'm sorry, but, contrary to what one may sometimes read in the Daily Express, there ain't £372bn in savings to be found from making LGBTQIA+ diversity officers redundant and cutting housing benefits to workshy families with 23 children.
In short, we can't cut spending on older people and we can't extract more from them in taxes, because anyone who tries to do that will be voted out. The asset wealth and retirement incomes of the better-off elderly, and the inheritances of their heirs, can only be paid for by tax rises and spending cuts in other areas. Which is why, simultaneously, taxation as a share of GDP is at levels last seen in the 1950s and record numbers of poorer people, most of them in working households, are now having to queue up to beg for handouts at food banks. We are completely and impossibly stuck.
Labour should have voted for David over Ed. Keir Starmer should have stood in 2015 and Jeremy Corbyn should have not been given the votes to get through.
It was good that Johnson beat Corbyn. Johnson should have left straight after. The Tories should have chosen Rishi over Truss.
It rained for about half the day, and got really heavy in the last hour or so of the walk. I must have looked quite a sorry sight trudging along in the rain; five people stopped to offer me a lift during that last hour!
Today I’ve had a shorter walk to Guingamp, about eighteen miles, but felt rather tired again. I’m not sure if that’s just general fatigue after my fortnight’s exertions, or because of how tough yesterday was, but I was quite slow today
I booked the only AirBnb apartment that had a washing machine as I was dangerously short of clean clothes. It’s a tiny studio flat, but the location is amazing
This is my view from the window; the Norte Dame Basilica of Bon-Secours. I think it’s close enough to spit on!
If there were still meaningful painless spending cuts to be had after the last decade and a half, that would be a scandal, sure. Especially given all the painful ones we've had. But nobody has pointed them out convincingly in detail. Which makes me suspect they're not there.
In the hunt for @Luckyguy1983's £150 billion, isn't that another drop in the ocean? I suppose we could stop paying our debt interest payments but I suspect that won't end well. Defaulting on debt isn't a very British thing to do, is it?
One area we could make a saving is begin enforcing health bonds and deposits for suspected health tourists. But even that's probably only £3-4bn per year. I'm not sure there's more "easy" savings in the NHS. If anything the pharma industry is right and the NHS drug tax is going to have to fall soon because it's hurting investment in UK pharma.
No government would ever b able to get your proposal through - every public service sector would be on strike and it would make the 70s look like a period of industrial harmony.
Switching new public sector employees to DC pensions might be achievable... but public sector salaries would have to increase to make them competitive.
No, we need to equalise income tax across all income types (and reduce it in time) and tax wealth.
But you seem very confused as to what you're trying to challenge me about. Do you want me to assign so many billions of cuts to respective Government departments, which is easy, or (as seems more likely) are you looking for specific programmes that you want me to 'cut', so that you can demonstrate how impossible it all is without stealing the food from the mouths of infants?
I agree the issue needs a solution but it's needs to be implementable.
Where do the savings come from?
As you can see, the growth in population is most marked in the older age ranges. The number of working age population has been mostly static.
To slap a 30-40% charge on public sector DB pensions is effectively the Government reneging on its contract with those employees.
Effectively safe now!
I’m not watching it, anyway.
The Commonwealth is a great way to foster educational, democratic, judicial and cultural links, but it likely needs a big bung from the UK to make it a bit more relevant globally.
Meanwhile, the proportion of the population aged under five has contracted significantly, because punitive taxation and stratospheric housing costs are actively preventing family formation. The future is one of an elderly vote growing continually in its electoral power, control of resources and demands for more money, propped up by a narrowing and increasingly impoverished base of put-upon workers.
The theme runs through every aspect of the concert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZldRypd3tg
And I agree we should fund it and promote it more. It's a huge asset.
Not a unique problem to our country. Wealthy and middle income countries are all rapidly greying populations. Look at South Korea for example:
The obvious problem is that minted elderly homeowners and their heirs constitute such a large fraction of the electorate that nobody will dare to do this. The nanosecond any politician proposes to slash income and corporation taxes and fillet spending on health and pensions to compensate - or, alternatively, keep spending up by imposing heavy taxation on property and other assets - the grey vote will stampede to the other guy who promises to keep things exactly as they are. Thus, change is impossible.
The current dispensation benefits too many people, and will therefore remain in place until the numbers of the struggling and destitute in the country are so large that they can finally outvote the wealthy retired folk and their heirs. That ain't happening any time soon.
What will be interesting is whether William follows in his place - the Queen apparently personally lobbied for Charles to succeed her, and that might not work again. But though the lack of a real mission is part of why the Commonwealth is harmless and evidently appealing gor new joiners, and now not all have had a British connection in the past, what route will they go for a Head if they don't go with William? Just have no head by rotating presidencies?
Thank you for the responses and likes to my article yesterday. The post-match debrief is backstage: if you or anybody else wants to join it please let me know and I will add you. You can post questions there and I will be online in that backstage area between 7pm and 8pm BST on Tuesday March 9th to answer them live: you are cordially invited. IRL I would bring cake, but alas we cannot do that online...
Never heard anyone suggest *that* before!
This lets it sink in.
I'm not sure what I'm doing on Tuesday evening but I'll let you know.
1. ROI is a small English-speaking economy in the EU that can attract business to headquarter there by offering a reduced CT rate. The UK is a completely different kettle of fish on so many levels; copying the ROI is not an option.
2. The 'Osborne CT cuts led to increased CT take' myth is debunked herehttps://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-did-cutting-corporation-tax-raise-money
Demographics and politics simply forbid it.
We’ve reached the end of the neo-liberal revolution and for Britain in particular it’s delivered this kind of high tax, public squalor, low productivity nightmare.
As the Irishman said, you wouldn’t want to start from here.
No, the only way is growth.
Growth through investment.
Public and private.
Certain in capital, but conceivably in people too.
Demographics is destiny.
The Harry Meghan “storyline” is deeply damaging.
Thus we find ourselves in the situation where not only have earned incomes stagnated for a decade and a half whilst property prices have recovered all their losses from the GFC and then continued to shoot into the stratosphere, but also the value of all residential property in the UK is now three times as great as the total market capitalisation of our publicly listed companies. The equivalent ratio in the US is 1:1. And people still wonder out loud why our productivity growth is so abysmal.
The presence of the Taoiseach, President of Ireland and Sinn Fein First Minister-elect at the Coronation is a small step towards that goal, as will the coming State visit.
The possibility of the Royals successfully pulling off a charm offensive to Ireland that helps to build a more positive relationship between Britain and Ireland - which Commonwealth membership would be a strong symbolic signal - is one of the few things that the Royal family could actually achieve.
But it’s difficult to see how why the Irish Republic would join the Commonwealth. Too much history in the way.
I would prefer it if we strengthened the British-Irish council.
What’s in it for ireland, joining the commonwealth?
Presumably, it would be a non-starter for SF? Is there any appetite in FG or FF?
But, maybe one day.
This Republican is willing to wish them the best of luck, in the knowledge that they'll need it.
This is doing a lot to repair damage.
FG have shown most interest in reaching out to Unionists in NI, to help ease the way to a United Ireland.
As for the 'fact check' (surely the most debased media article format in existence these days), it has precisely *zero* content debunking Truss's assertions about Osborne's CT cut, other than reminding us that tax cuts don't take place in a vacuum, which most intelligent people knew anyway.