Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
Donkey has policies - and when the Tories keep saying "they have no policies" whilst proffering their box of crayons, it just makes them look like shysters. Labour don't yet have *exciting* policies, but at this stage not being openly corrupt and grossly incompetent would be a start.
LOL
Theyre only "not being openly corrupt and grossly incompetent" because theyre not in government. Day one of Bland that all changes. Firstly they get scrutiny and secondly we get to realise what a bunch of talentless dorks have been elected. In Norfolk you could count the number of talented MPs on one hand and still have five fingers left over.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
Donkey has policies - and when the Tories keep saying "they have no policies" whilst proffering their box of crayons, it just makes them look like shysters. Labour don't yet have *exciting* policies, but at this stage not being openly corrupt and grossly incompetent would be a start.
I think it hard to get a cigarette paper between them, but even so Starmer is a step up. The rampant cronyism, mendacity and incompetence of the current government needs to be punished for the good of democracy.
We will have to wait for the GE after for any real change of direction. The public finances and run down nature of collapsing government services give little alternative to enduring the hangover.
I know it was yesterday morning, but I was greatly entertained to hear Ben Houchen International Airport screeching on about how Andy McDonald was a "liar and a coward" over the Teesworks scandal.
Now I can't stand Andy McD, but the liar is Houchen (claiming the NAO had signed it all off when it hadn't) and the coward is Houchen.
First Private Eye and now the Financial Times have dug deeply into the public record over this and placed in public the facts over who was paid what. Houchen keeps lying that the Land Registry figure is incorrect. But won't shed any light or allow any scrutiny.
Ultimately, if the FT and the Eye have libelled him and the developers - what Houchen claims - then legal proceedings could already be going ahead. They only want to fight the Labour MP reporting on their reports and demanding an enquiry - one which Houchen first claimed had already happened (a lie) and now says he wants to happen.
But then again, even BHIA is a better mayor than Jessie Jessie Jessie Jessie Joe Jacobs would have been.
Off topic - I've just been watching a programme about the Isle of Man TT on ITV4. I don't know much about motorsport - but this was fantastic. And then, approaching the break, a mention was made of the people who had died. Six people this year, including a father-and-son in the motorbike and sidecar racing. And apparently over 200 riders have died since this started 100 years ago, along with an unspecified number of spectators and marshalls; and since 1937, there has only been one year in which races were held and no-one died. And this was alluded to by some of the riders (and indeed spectators), who were clear that they knew the risks, and were chasing a dream. This all seemed quite surprising in the 21st century. And then I remembered this was the Isle of Man. The New Hampshire of the British Isles. Live Free or Die. My own instinctive reaction was that happiness that something so dangerous is still allowed to happen. Make Britain Manx! Not least because the Isle of Man looks like an idealised version of the North, in miniature - moorland and mountain and seaside villages. Just lovely. I had an opportunity to go and work in the IoM a couple of decades back, and I often wonder how life would have turned out - but while it looks agreeable enough to me now, there's possibly less to offer the me who was in my late 20s.
The IoM TT is like the Monaco Grand Prix, winch-launching gliders, or many other things now considered dangerous, in that there’s no way the authorities would ever let you do it if it were proposed today, but because it’s been extant for the best part of a century it has sufficient grandfather rights to be allowed to continue.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
Donkey has policies - and when the Tories keep saying "they have no policies" whilst proffering their box of crayons, it just makes them look like shysters. Labour don't yet have *exciting* policies, but at this stage not being openly corrupt and grossly incompetent would be a start.
I think it hard to get a cigarette paper between them, but even so Starmer is a step up. The rampant cronyism, mendacity and incompetence of the current government needs to be punished for the good of democracy.
We will have to wait for the GE after for any real change of direction. The public finances and run down nature of collapsing government services give little alternative to enduring the hangover.
We can't fix the country because we won't face up to how broken it is.
A Labour MP has been accused of multiple incidents of inappropriate behavior toward junior female colleagues over a long career in British politics.
Five women said that Geraint Davies, a former House of Commons select committee chair who was first elected in 1997, subjected them to unwanted sexual attention, both physical and verbal, after coming into contact with them through his work as an MP.
Many of the alleged incidents took place on the parliamentary estate, sometimes in bars or after late-night votes. One of the women he allegedly targeted was just 19 years old at the time.
Davies, 63, said that he did not “recognize” the allegations, adding: “If I have inadvertently caused offence to anyone, then I am naturally sorry.”
POLITICO spoke to more than 20 people who worked with Davies in parliament, including serving MPs and current and former members of Labour Party staff. They described a pattern of excessive drinking, sexual comments and unwanted touching by Davies stretching back at least five years, directed exclusively at younger women in the workplace.
Davies’ alleged behavior appears to have been an open secret in certain parts of the Labour Party, but no action was taken in the absence of a formal complaint. Such situations underline the difficulty of rooting out harassment claims in parliament.
In one instance, a former Labour Party staffer alleged that Davies, then 58, approached her while she was extremely intoxicated in a parliamentary bar. He proceeded to buy her another alcoholic drink and suggested they could go back to his nearby flat, she claimed. She was 22 years old at the time.
Davies took her number, saying he wanted to discuss parliamentary business, and subsequently sent her a string of sexually suggestive messages, alluding to masturbation on the parliamentary premises.
The former researcher initially responded to his messages in amusement, but later became uncomfortable and asked him to stop.
Off topic - I've just been watching a programme about the Isle of Man TT on ITV4. I don't know much about motorsport - but this was fantastic. And then, approaching the break, a mention was made of the people who had died. Six people this year, including a father-and-son in the motorbike and sidecar racing. And apparently over 200 riders have died since this started 100 years ago, along with an unspecified number of spectators and marshalls; and since 1937, there has only been one year in which races were held and no-one died. And this was alluded to by some of the riders (and indeed spectators), who were clear that they knew the risks, and were chasing a dream. This all seemed quite surprising in the 21st century. And then I remembered this was the Isle of Man. The New Hampshire of the British Isles. Live Free or Die. My own instinctive reaction was that happiness that something so dangerous is still allowed to happen. Make Britain Manx! Not least because the Isle of Man looks like an idealised version of the North, in miniature - moorland and mountain and seaside villages. Just lovely. I had an opportunity to go and work in the IoM a couple of decades back, and I often wonder how life would have turned out - but while it looks agreeable enough to me now, there's possibly less to offer the me who was in my late 20s.
The IoM TT is like the Monaco Grand Prix, winch-launching gliders, or many other things now considered dangerous, in that there’s no way the authorities would ever let you do it if it were proposed today, but because it’s been extant for the best part of a century it has sufficient grandfather rights to be allowed to continue.
Yes. Nobody tells riders to do it. Its not their job. Its the challenge of their riding career. My village garage is shutting for a week because he is off to the TT. We both agreed that we have no interest in motorbikes, but do have an interest watching lunatics doing 160mph past someone's garden wall...
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s spokesperson says all of the former PM’s WhatsApps and notebooks requested by Covid Inquiry have been handed to Cabinet Office in full.
Now up to Cabinet Office to hand them over to Inquiry or not. Johnson urges them to do so. Deadline 4pm tomorrow.
From a political betting view point, Primeminister Wallace or Mourdant might be close now.
Sunak might be toast. He is already in a very weak position. With Tories on 28% and slaughtered in the locals - Sunak’s WhatsAppGate could be about to finish him. The second Tory PM this parliament brought down by covid.
A worry for Labour as they clearly have Sunak beaten, sub 200 Tory seats even. But PM Penny might trump Labour appeals for a fresh change.
Penny will come across as more centre ground to voters than the increasingly right wing Starmer front bench.
Sunak actually polls better than his party, especially with under 50s and urban professionals.
Mordaunt is too woke for the party membership as leader.
I doubt the whatsapp messages will make the slightest difference to Sunak's position, indeed Tory and RefUK voters think we locked down too early and too long if anything
With the benefit of hindsight, which I fully accept was not available at the time and the risks were very difficult to calculate, I think it is far from clear that we should ever have locked down at all. Protected vulnerable groups, certainly. Ensured proper protection for medical and care staff beyond doubt. But closing schools, factories, pubs, restaurants, etc. I think it was a mistake now.
The problem is, of course, that we didn't have the benefit of hindsight. We had terrible scenes coming out of Northern Italy and New York. We had stories of ambulances running through the night.
And we knew very little of successful treatment methods, and had little idea when - or even if - a vaccine would be forthcoming.
I don't blame the government for the initial lockdown.
I do blame them for the severity of the restrictions, and the length of time they went on for, despite all the evidence that we were getting on top of the disease. It is an absolute disgrace that, even though we had a fantastic headstart with the vaccine roll out, that we lagged so many of our European peers for the removal of restrictions.
Yes, I accept that this is with hindsight. We never got near a collapse of the hospital system, we never used the nightingale hospitals, the projections the government were being given were alarming but entirely wrong. I accept given what was not known, the first lockdown was probably inevitable but I would still want the inquiry to look at whether it was in fact a good idea and whether we should ever do the like again faced with anything similar. The subsequent lockdowns were increasingly bizarre.
There was no subtlety in the UK government's response; no assessment of what measures added little value, while imposing enormous restrictions on personal freedoms.
In retrospect, you could probably have achieved 50% of the reductions in R by closing nightclubs/karaoke bars/live music venues and requiring masks on public transport, while letting people otherwise go about their business.
The limitations on people visiting each other in their homes, or on going outside for a walk, were absolutely indefensible.
(And in between those two there were restrictions of varying degrees of sense.)
“no assessment of what measures added little value”? Everything was considered and assessed. Some of those assessments may have been wrong and mistakes were made, but I don’t see anything to support this claim.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
That's a pretty woke outlook, saying darkies cannot be racist, only whiteys.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
Brexiteer willing to vote for another extremist.
I am shocked.
Though it is a tribute to the peace process that a Norn Iron chap would be willing to vote for Corbyn.
I disagree with probably about 50% of Jezzas policies but could quite happily live with the rest. Starmer is just grey ooze , you dont even know what youre getting so how can you agree with any of it.
And I am quite horrified at your last comment. Ulster people are renowned for being open minded, easy going folk who dont hold grudges, See Eamonn Holmes in the current Schofield farrago.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Are you saying that only white people can be racist?
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
I'm sitting on the train to London Waterloo this morning. It's about half-full.
The mood is absolutely febrile.
There is one lady doing a sudoku whilst drinking coffee from her thermos. Another is dismissively scrolling through The Metro on his phone. A third is reading Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, whilst underlining key points in the book. Another is gazing wistfully out of the window. At least eight of them are plugged in with airpods. Someone is trying to sleep but can't get comfortable on the plastic window partition. One guy, there, can't decide what type of electronic music to select on Spotify and keeps changing his album selections.
You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. It's clear that despite the pretended distractions they are all, really, secretly thinking about Rishi and the Tories, and how a reckoning is coming.
But, it remains unsaid. It doesn't need to be said.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
That's a pretty woke outlook, saying darkies cannot be racist, only whiteys.
Im not the one pedalling the theory. I merely seek clarification from those who are.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere.
You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
That's a pretty woke outlook, saying darkies cannot be racist, only whiteys.
Im not the one pedalling the theory. I merely seek clarification from those who are.
I don't have a racist bone in my body, as evidenced by all my girlfriends being white.
But can confirm some Asian people have racist views.
I'm sitting on the train to London Waterloo this morning. It's about half-full.
The mood is absolutely febrile.
There is one lady doing a sudoku whilst drinking coffee from her thermos. Another is dismissively scrolling through The Metro on his phone. A third is reading Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, whilst underlining key points in the book. Another is gazing wistfully out of the window. At least eight of them are plugged in with airpods. Someone is trying to sleep but can't get comfortable on the plastic window partition. One guy, there, can't decide what type of electronic music to select on Spotify and keeps changing his album selections.
You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. It's clear that despite the pretended distractions they are all, really, secretly thinking about Rishi and the Tories, and how a reckoning is coming.
But, it remains unsaid. It doesn't need to be said.
Yes, when everyone is united against the government, nothing more is needed to be said.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
That's a pretty woke outlook, saying darkies cannot be racist, only whiteys.
Im not the one pedalling the theory. I merely seek clarification from those who are.
I don't have a racist bone in my body, as evidenced by all my girlfriends being white.
But can confirm some Asian people have racist views.
How many girlfriends do you have? Are you Boris Johnson?
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
Monzo has reported a sharp jump in its provisions for potential loan losses after a rapid increase in lending that has involved a push into the “buy now, pay later” industry.
The fast-growing digital bank has set aside £101.2 million to cover possible bad loans in the year to the end of February, up from only £14 million in 2022, annual results for the bank show.
Monzo also has revealed that the City regulator has widened the scope of its investigation into possible anti-money laundering breaches at the group.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
So have I got this right? A manky old steelworks was bought using taxpayer £millions, sold for around a tenner, and the taxpayer is also footing the bill for the clean up.
What was it the Who said about new bosses in "Won't Get Fooled Again"?
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
That's a pretty woke outlook, saying darkies cannot be racist, only whiteys.
Im not the one pedalling the theory. I merely seek clarification from those who are.
I don't have a racist bone in my body, as evidenced by all my girlfriends being white.
But can confirm some Asian people have racist views.
I am trying to frame a gag about your girlfriends not having a racist bone in their body but its early !!!
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
I understand very well what it means and I am not throwing it around lightly. This government revels in its actions and uses the skin colour of some of its members to try and deflect criticism. It’s transparent, unedifying and reveals just how stupid and nasty they really are.
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
So have I got this right? A manky old steelworks was bought using taxpayer £millions, sold for around a tenner, and the taxpayer is also footing the bill for the clean up.
What was it the Who said about new bosses in "Won't Get Fooled Again"?
And a few years into the new labour govt, as was the case with new labour, it will be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
I'm sitting on the train to London Waterloo this morning. It's about half-full.
The mood is absolutely febrile.
There is one lady doing a sudoku whilst drinking coffee from her thermos. Another is dismissively scrolling through The Metro on his phone. A third is reading Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, whilst underlining key points in the book. Another is gazing wistfully out of the window. At least eight of them are plugged in with airpods. Someone is trying to sleep but can't get comfortable on the plastic window partition. One guy, there, can't decide what type of electronic music to select on Spotify and keeps changing his album selections.
You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. It's clear that despite the pretended distractions they are all, really, secretly thinking about Rishi and the Tories, and how a reckoning is coming.
But, it remains unsaid. It doesn't need to be said.
Sadly, the lack of an Albanian taxi driver makes your story unbelievable.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
That's a pretty woke outlook, saying darkies cannot be racist, only whiteys.
Im not the one pedalling the theory. I merely seek clarification from those who are.
I don't have a racist bone in my body, as evidenced by all my girlfriends being white.
But can confirm some Asian people have racist views.
I am trying to frame a gag about your girlfriends not having a racist bone in their body but its early !!!
BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s spokesperson says all of the former PM’s WhatsApps and notebooks requested by Covid Inquiry have been handed to Cabinet Office in full.
Now up to Cabinet Office to hand them over to Inquiry or not. Johnson urges them to do so. Deadline 4pm tomorrow.
From a political betting view point, Primeminister Wallace or Mourdant might be close now.
Sunak might be toast. He is already in a very weak position. With Tories on 28% and slaughtered in the locals - Sunak’s WhatsAppGate could be about to finish him. The second Tory PM this parliament brought down by covid.
A worry for Labour as they clearly have Sunak beaten, sub 200 Tory seats even. But PM Penny might trump Labour appeals for a fresh change.
Penny will come across as more centre ground to voters than the increasingly right wing Starmer front bench.
Sunak actually polls better than his party, especially with under 50s and urban professionals.
Mordaunt is too woke for the party membership as leader.
I doubt the whatsapp messages will make the slightest difference to Sunak's position, indeed Tory and RefUK voters think we locked down too early and too long if anything
With the benefit of hindsight, which I fully accept was not available at the time and the risks were very difficult to calculate, I think it is far from clear that we should ever have locked down at all. Protected vulnerable groups, certainly. Ensured proper protection for medical and care staff beyond doubt. But closing schools, factories, pubs, restaurants, etc. I think it was a mistake now.
The problem is, of course, that we didn't have the benefit of hindsight. We had terrible scenes coming out of Northern Italy and New York. We had stories of ambulances running through the night.
And we knew very little of successful treatment methods, and had little idea when - or even if - a vaccine would be forthcoming.
I don't blame the government for the initial lockdown.
I do blame them for the severity of the restrictions, and the length of time they went on for, despite all the evidence that we were getting on top of the disease. It is an absolute disgrace that, even though we had a fantastic headstart with the vaccine roll out, that we lagged so many of our European peers for the removal of restrictions.
Yes, I accept that this is with hindsight. We never got near a collapse of the hospital system, we never used the nightingale hospitals, the projections the government were being given were alarming but entirely wrong. I accept given what was not known, the first lockdown was probably inevitable but I would still want the inquiry to look at whether it was in fact a good idea and whether we should ever do the like again faced with anything similar. The subsequent lockdowns were increasingly bizarre.
the mask mandate was ridiculous and cowardly - masks did F all to stop the virus as proved by Scotland having higher rates of infection whilst having a mask mandate when England eventually relaxed it. The mask thig was especially evil when applied in schools
The problem is that people like to look for silver bullets.
And there are no silver bullets. Mask wearing reduced the spread of Covid.
Now, did that justify mask mandates beyond a certain point? Almost certainly not. But it's ridiculous to claim that mask wearing did not reduce the spread of a airborne viral infection of the respiratory tract.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
I understand very well what it means and I am not throwing it around lightly. This government revels in its actions and uses the skin colour of some of its members to try and deflect criticism. It’s transparent, unedifying and reveals just how stupid and nasty they really are.
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
deluded. Im afraid youre stuck in some late 80s timewarp. The sad thing for the left is they have missed the tide of social change has swept past them and theyre stuck Canute like in the sea as the tide keeps coming in.
We live in one of the least racist countries on the planet, The conservatives have moved on and their candidates have got to high office largely on their own merits. They became MPs on the votes of cosntituency selection panels full of those white oldies lefties despise. It is ironic that the "progressives" are so stuck in the past they miss the fact that they are the people who wont do what they criticise others for. Labour cant bring itself to select a female leader - even the DUP have passed that hurdle.
So much as you wish to push the Uncle Tom theory, Im afraid I wont be joining in with you.
"Throughout this process, SNP MPs have remained focused on standing up for Scotland and supporting our hard-working staff.
"We will continue to hold the Tories and pro-Brexit Labour to account for the damage their policies are inflicting on Scotland."
Good to know that the Scottish parliament is not accountable nor responsible for things that happen in Scotland. Perhaps it should be abolished, and the money saved put back into public services?
BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s spokesperson says all of the former PM’s WhatsApps and notebooks requested by Covid Inquiry have been handed to Cabinet Office in full.
Now up to Cabinet Office to hand them over to Inquiry or not. Johnson urges them to do so. Deadline 4pm tomorrow.
From a political betting view point, Primeminister Wallace or Mourdant might be close now.
Sunak might be toast. He is already in a very weak position. With Tories on 28% and slaughtered in the locals - Sunak’s WhatsAppGate could be about to finish him. The second Tory PM this parliament brought down by covid.
A worry for Labour as they clearly have Sunak beaten, sub 200 Tory seats even. But PM Penny might trump Labour appeals for a fresh change.
Penny will come across as more centre ground to voters than the increasingly right wing Starmer front bench.
Sunak actually polls better than his party, especially with under 50s and urban professionals.
Mordaunt is too woke for the party membership as leader.
I doubt the whatsapp messages will make the slightest difference to Sunak's position, indeed Tory and RefUK voters think we locked down too early and too long if anything
With the benefit of hindsight, which I fully accept was not available at the time and the risks were very difficult to calculate, I think it is far from clear that we should ever have locked down at all. Protected vulnerable groups, certainly. Ensured proper protection for medical and care staff beyond doubt. But closing schools, factories, pubs, restaurants, etc. I think it was a mistake now.
The problem is, of course, that we didn't have the benefit of hindsight. We had terrible scenes coming out of Northern Italy and New York. We had stories of ambulances running through the night.
And we knew very little of successful treatment methods, and had little idea when - or even if - a vaccine would be forthcoming.
I don't blame the government for the initial lockdown.
I do blame them for the severity of the restrictions, and the length of time they went on for, despite all the evidence that we were getting on top of the disease. It is an absolute disgrace that, even though we had a fantastic headstart with the vaccine roll out, that we lagged so many of our European peers for the removal of restrictions.
Yes, I accept that this is with hindsight. We never got near a collapse of the hospital system, we never used the nightingale hospitals, the projections the government were being given were alarming but entirely wrong. I accept given what was not known, the first lockdown was probably inevitable but I would still want the inquiry to look at whether it was in fact a good idea and whether we should ever do the like again faced with anything similar. The subsequent lockdowns were increasingly bizarre.
the mask mandate was ridiculous and cowardly - masks did F all to stop the virus as proved by Scotland having higher rates of infection whilst having a mask mandate when England eventually relaxed it. The mask thig was especially evil when applied in schools
The problem is that people like to look for silver bullets.
And there are no silver bullets. Mask wearing reduced the spread of Covid.
Now, did that justify mask mandates beyond a certain point? Almost certainly not. But it's ridiculous to claim that mask wearing did not reduce the spread of a airborne viral infection of the respiratory tract.
I had an interesting discussion recently with an American professor of biology. He cited the rapid evolution of covid variants, each replacing the last, as one of the best illustrations of evolution and natural selection that one could ask for.
A secondary thought that arose is this may well explain the fixation on the lab release conspiracy theories abundant on the American right. They don't believe in evolution, therefore covid must have been deliberately constructed by someone.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
I understand very well what it means and I am not throwing it around lightly. This government revels in its actions and uses the skin colour of some of its members to try and deflect criticism. It’s transparent, unedifying and reveals just how stupid and nasty they really are.
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
deluded. Im afraid youre stuck in some late 80s timewarp. The sad thing for the left is they have missed the tide of social change has swept past them and theyre stuck Canute like in the sea as the tide keeps coming in.
We live in one of the least racist countries on the planet, The conservatives have moved on and their candidates have got to high office largely on their own merits. They became MPs on the votes of cosntituency selection panels full of those white oldies lefties despise. It is ironic that the "progressives" are so stuck in the past they miss the fact that they are the people who wont do what they criticise others for. Labour cant bring itself to select a female leader - even the DUP have passed that hurdle.
So much as you wish to push the Uncle Tom theory, Im afraid I wont be joining in with you.
It's really rather ironic that you accuse me of being deluded and then write that last sentence!
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
Brexiteer willing to vote for another extremist.
I am shocked.
Though it is a tribute to the peace process that a Norn Iron chap would be willing to vote for Corbyn.
Actually, quite a lot of NI chaps would have been willing ab initio, surely? Or so we have been pretty much told by PBTories for the last decade or two (well, it feels like it).
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
So have I got this right? A manky old steelworks was bought using taxpayer £millions, sold for around a tenner, and the taxpayer is also footing the bill for the clean up.
What was it the Who said about new bosses in "Won't Get Fooled Again"?
And a few years into the new labour govt, as was the case with new labour, it will be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
I have been highly critical of Labour corruption on these pages citing deceased historic local authority figures like T. Dan Smith and Graham Jenkins. The dismissal of decades of Labour corruption by voters in the RedWall in England and Wales should have been a moment for celebration.
As you allude, the Labour Party have form when it comes to corruption. However it turns out any incoming administration will have to put in a shift if it wants to exceed Johnsonian Conservative levels of rewarding patronage with PPE contracts and accepting political gifts from figures close to the Kremlin. Although I have no doubt with a little effort it can be done.
BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s spokesperson says all of the former PM’s WhatsApps and notebooks requested by Covid Inquiry have been handed to Cabinet Office in full.
Now up to Cabinet Office to hand them over to Inquiry or not. Johnson urges them to do so. Deadline 4pm tomorrow.
From a political betting view point, Primeminister Wallace or Mourdant might be close now.
Sunak might be toast. He is already in a very weak position. With Tories on 28% and slaughtered in the locals - Sunak’s WhatsAppGate could be about to finish him. The second Tory PM this parliament brought down by covid.
A worry for Labour as they clearly have Sunak beaten, sub 200 Tory seats even. But PM Penny might trump Labour appeals for a fresh change.
Penny will come across as more centre ground to voters than the increasingly right wing Starmer front bench.
Sunak actually polls better than his party, especially with under 50s and urban professionals.
Mordaunt is too woke for the party membership as leader.
I doubt the whatsapp messages will make the slightest difference to Sunak's position, indeed Tory and RefUK voters think we locked down too early and too long if anything
With the benefit of hindsight, which I fully accept was not available at the time and the risks were very difficult to calculate, I think it is far from clear that we should ever have locked down at all. Protected vulnerable groups, certainly. Ensured proper protection for medical and care staff beyond doubt. But closing schools, factories, pubs, restaurants, etc. I think it was a mistake now.
The problem is, of course, that we didn't have the benefit of hindsight. We had terrible scenes coming out of Northern Italy and New York. We had stories of ambulances running through the night.
And we knew very little of successful treatment methods, and had little idea when - or even if - a vaccine would be forthcoming.
I don't blame the government for the initial lockdown.
I do blame them for the severity of the restrictions, and the length of time they went on for, despite all the evidence that we were getting on top of the disease. It is an absolute disgrace that, even though we had a fantastic headstart with the vaccine roll out, that we lagged so many of our European peers for the removal of restrictions.
Yes, I accept that this is with hindsight. We never got near a collapse of the hospital system, we never used the nightingale hospitals, the projections the government were being given were alarming but entirely wrong. I accept given what was not known, the first lockdown was probably inevitable but I would still want the inquiry to look at whether it was in fact a good idea and whether we should ever do the like again faced with anything similar. The subsequent lockdowns were increasingly bizarre.
the mask mandate was ridiculous and cowardly - masks did F all to stop the virus as proved by Scotland having higher rates of infection whilst having a mask mandate when England eventually relaxed it. The mask thig was especially evil when applied in schools
The problem is that people like to look for silver bullets.
And there are no silver bullets. Mask wearing reduced the spread of Covid.
Now, did that justify mask mandates beyond a certain point? Almost certainly not. But it's ridiculous to claim that mask wearing did not reduce the spread of a airborne viral infection of the respiratory tract.
I had an interesting discussion recently with an American professor of biology. He cited the rapid evolution of covid variants, each replacing the last, as one of the best illustrations of evolution and natural selection that one could ask for.
A secondary thought that arose is this may well explain the fixation on the lab release conspiracy theories abundant on the American right. They don't believe in evolution, therefore covid must have been deliberately constructed by someone.
I was going to ask how we explain Leon, but I then realised that might not be a profitable discussion.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
I understand very well what it means and I am not throwing it around lightly. This government revels in its actions and uses the skin colour of some of its members to try and deflect criticism. It’s transparent, unedifying and reveals just how stupid and nasty they really are.
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
deluded. Im afraid youre stuck in some late 80s timewarp. The sad thing for the left is they have missed the tide of social change has swept past them and theyre stuck Canute like in the sea as the tide keeps coming in.
We live in one of the least racist countries on the planet, The conservatives have moved on and their candidates have got to high office largely on their own merits. They became MPs on the votes of cosntituency selection panels full of those white oldies lefties despise. It is ironic that the "progressives" are so stuck in the past they miss the fact that they are the people who wont do what they criticise others for. Labour cant bring itself to select a female leader - even the DUP have passed that hurdle.
So much as you wish to push the Uncle Tom theory, Im afraid I wont be joining in with you.
It's really rather ironic that you accuse me of being deluded and then write that last sentence!
Its how Ive interpreted what youre saying, you can always it.
Off topic - I've just been watching a programme about the Isle of Man TT on ITV4. I don't know much about motorsport - but this was fantastic. And then, approaching the break, a mention was made of the people who had died. Six people this year, including a father-and-son in the motorbike and sidecar racing. And apparently over 200 riders have died since this started 100 years ago, along with an unspecified number of spectators and marshalls; and since 1937, there has only been one year in which races were held and no-one died. And this was alluded to by some of the riders (and indeed spectators), who were clear that they knew the risks, and were chasing a dream. This all seemed quite surprising in the 21st century. And then I remembered this was the Isle of Man. The New Hampshire of the British Isles. Live Free or Die. My own instinctive reaction was that happiness that something so dangerous is still allowed to happen. Make Britain Manx! Not least because the Isle of Man looks like an idealised version of the North, in miniature - moorland and mountain and seaside villages. Just lovely. I had an opportunity to go and work in the IoM a couple of decades back, and I often wonder how life would have turned out - but while it looks agreeable enough to me now, there's possibly less to offer the me who was in my late 20s.
The unexamined aspect of the TT is that the riders are largely has-beens and never-gonna-bes who are risking their lives to make a mortgage payment because they aren't fast enough to make in regular series like BSB, BSS, etc.
Doesn't that give it a bit of gritty nobility though? A Raymond Carver short story on two wheels.
Just reading the account of Dundee at Killiecrankie in the latest History Scotland. Rather redolent of that.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
I understand very well what it means and I am not throwing it around lightly. This government revels in its actions and uses the skin colour of some of its members to try and deflect criticism. It’s transparent, unedifying and reveals just how stupid and nasty they really are.
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
deluded. Im afraid youre stuck in some late 80s timewarp. The sad thing for the left is they have missed the tide of social change has swept past them and theyre stuck Canute like in the sea as the tide keeps coming in.
We live in one of the least racist countries on the planet, The conservatives have moved on and their candidates have got to high office largely on their own merits. They became MPs on the votes of cosntituency selection panels full of those white oldies lefties despise. It is ironic that the "progressives" are so stuck in the past they miss the fact that they are the people who wont do what they criticise others for. Labour cant bring itself to select a female leader - even the DUP have passed that hurdle.
So much as you wish to push the Uncle Tom theory, Im afraid I wont be joining in with you.
It's really rather ironic that you accuse me of being deluded and then write that last sentence!
Its how Ive interpreted what youre saying, you can always it.
Incidentally, is there something wrong with your keyboard? Because that makes no sense at all.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least there is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
"Throughout this process, SNP MPs have remained focused on standing up for Scotland and supporting our hard-working staff.
"We will continue to hold the Tories and pro-Brexit Labour to account for the damage their policies are inflicting on Scotland."
Good to know that the Scottish parliament is not accountable nor responsible for things that happen in Scotland. Perhaps it should be abolished, and the money saved put back into public services?
Quite a lot of UK government is not devolved. So their statement is perfectly accurate.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
I understand very well what it means and I am not throwing it around lightly. This government revels in its actions and uses the skin colour of some of its members to try and deflect criticism. It’s transparent, unedifying and reveals just how stupid and nasty they really are.
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
deluded. Im afraid youre stuck in some late 80s timewarp. The sad thing for the left is they have missed the tide of social change has swept past them and theyre stuck Canute like in the sea as the tide keeps coming in.
We live in one of the least racist countries on the planet, The conservatives have moved on and their candidates have got to high office largely on their own merits. They became MPs on the votes of cosntituency selection panels full of those white oldies lefties despise. It is ironic that the "progressives" are so stuck in the past they miss the fact that they are the people who wont do what they criticise others for. Labour cant bring itself to select a female leader - even the DUP have passed that hurdle.
So much as you wish to push the Uncle Tom theory, Im afraid I wont be joining in with you.
It's really rather ironic that you accuse me of being deluded and then write that last sentence!
Its how Ive interpreted what youre saying, you can always it.
Incidentally, is there something wrong with your keyboard? Because that makes no sense at all.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
I understand very well what it means and I am not throwing it around lightly. This government revels in its actions and uses the skin colour of some of its members to try and deflect criticism. It’s transparent, unedifying and reveals just how stupid and nasty they really are.
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
deluded. Im afraid youre stuck in some late 80s timewarp. The sad thing for the left is they have missed the tide of social change has swept past them and theyre stuck Canute like in the sea as the tide keeps coming in.
We live in one of the least racist countries on the planet, The conservatives have moved on and their candidates have got to high office largely on their own merits. They became MPs on the votes of cosntituency selection panels full of those white oldies lefties despise. It is ironic that the "progressives" are so stuck in the past they miss the fact that they are the people who wont do what they criticise others for. Labour cant bring itself to select a female leader - even the DUP have passed that hurdle.
So much as you wish to push the Uncle Tom theory, Im afraid I wont be joining in with you.
It's really rather ironic that you accuse me of being deluded and then write that last sentence!
Its how Ive interpreted what youre saying, you can always it.
Incidentally, is there something wrong with your keyboard? Because that makes no sense at all.
Ok, since youre playing diversion Ill leave it.
It was a serious question. No apostrophes, and missing words that render the rest meaningless. I was wondering if there was an issue with your keyboard, or autocorrect. But if you don't want to answer, you don't have to.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
Sarah Montague gave a very robust defence of Houchen on WATO. She demanded Andy Mc Donald repeat the accusations he made against Houchen under parliamentary privilege. He refused, and Sarah took the win on behalf of Ben.
I have to say selling millions of pounds worth of (even brownfield) real estate for less than a tenner raised my eyebrow.
I don't know anything about this situation. However in my experience it is common for these brownfield sites to have a zero value, for instance where the clean up costs exceed the land value even with planning permission in place.
I believe the same site had been bought with public funds for a significant (£millions) fee a year or two earlier.
I don’t know the details of this specific situation so not commenting on that.
More generally if you have land that the owner won’t pay to clean up but the government desires to bring back into productive use then the government needs to subsidise the clean up. That is effectively what has been done here.
The government has unlocked land from the previous owner, cleaned it up and transferred to a new owner. They may not have maximised value but that may not have been the purpose of the transaction.
IF that is the case, then fine. But there appears to be a decided lack of transparency in how the deal was done.
If millions were paid for the pre-cleanup land, further large sums of money spent, and the land then sold for a tenner, a detailed accounting is the very least the public should expect.
Interesting report on the woke wars at Fenland U, and the reluctance to accept historical analysis, even that based on simple accountancy. One academic "was surprised by the tenor of the responses, and particularly by the fact that the most strident criticism had come from life fellows who were not scholars of Britain or empire. To her, it felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of the project and a recycling of culture-war talking points."
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
Off topic - I've just been watching a programme about the Isle of Man TT on ITV4. I don't know much about motorsport - but this was fantastic. And then, approaching the break, a mention was made of the people who had died. Six people this year, including a father-and-son in the motorbike and sidecar racing. And apparently over 200 riders have died since this started 100 years ago, along with an unspecified number of spectators and marshalls; and since 1937, there has only been one year in which races were held and no-one died. And this was alluded to by some of the riders (and indeed spectators), who were clear that they knew the risks, and were chasing a dream. This all seemed quite surprising in the 21st century. And then I remembered this was the Isle of Man. The New Hampshire of the British Isles. Live Free or Die. My own instinctive reaction was that happiness that something so dangerous is still allowed to happen. Make Britain Manx! Not least because the Isle of Man looks like an idealised version of the North, in miniature - moorland and mountain and seaside villages. Just lovely. I had an opportunity to go and work in the IoM a couple of decades back, and I often wonder how life would have turned out - but while it looks agreeable enough to me now, there's possibly less to offer the me who was in my late 20s.
The unexamined aspect of the TT is that the riders are largely has-beens and never-gonna-bes who are risking their lives to make a mortgage payment because they aren't fast enough to make in regular series like BSB, BSS, etc.
Doesn't that give it a bit of gritty nobility though? A Raymond Carver short story on two wheels.
Just reading the account of Dundee at Killiecrankie in the latest History Scotland. Rather redolent of that.
Motorsport always had those grim stories of inadequate machines pushed beyond their limits to meet financial needs.
I think one of the surprises of the Senna crash was that in the age of zillion pound F1, a car went on the track with a hideous bodge. It seemed so 1950s.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The thing is - if you change things away from the status quo, other changes then become plausible - especially given the state of the country's finances.
CGT on primary residencies would be a great quid pro quo if they were exempt from inheritance tax.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The money will be available at the point of sale. And there seems no other way than massively icnreased council tax/land tax to deal with unearned capital.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
Depends if you WFH all the time. One bank has so many people in India that I don't know any UK staff members who visit an office except for fun or bi-annual meetings.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
To mix my sporting metaphors, TSE teed that one up for you. Fair play though, you were quick out of the blocks!
Indeed, looking at Rightmove the average home in London, the South East and South West and East of England is now above the inheritance tax threshold in price.
Even in Scotland the average detached home is now worth £349k ie also above the IHT threshold and the same applies to detached homes across most of the North, Midlands and Wales and NI
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
So have I got this right? A manky old steelworks was bought using taxpayer £millions, sold for around a tenner, and the taxpayer is also footing the bill for the clean up.
What was it the Who said about new bosses in "Won't Get Fooled Again"?
And a few years into the new labour govt, as was the case with new labour, it will be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
I have been highly critical of Labour corruption on these pages citing deceased historic local authority figures like T. Dan Smith and Graham Jenkins. The dismissal of decades of Labour corruption by voters in the RedWall in England and Wales should have been a moment for celebration.
As you allude, the Labour Party have form when it comes to corruption. However it turns out any incoming administration will have to put in a shift if it wants to exceed Johnsonian Conservative levels of rewarding patronage with PPE contracts and accepting political gifts from figures close to the Kremlin. Although I have no doubt with a little effort it can be done.
I remember eagerly voting in New Labour, to move away from the sleaze of the Tory years.
Within a few months they had taken a bung from F1 to exempt them from the Tobacco advertising ban !!!!
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
Yes.
So the govts inability to get a grip is all about getting back at whitey. I see.
No, it’s all about them hating people from elsewhere.
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
Thats not racism its xenophobia and just about all societies have it to some degree.
Even if I accept your point, which I don’t, not usually (fortunately) to this degree.
Im afraid racism is just one of those overused insults which people throw around without even understanding what it means.
I understand very well what it means and I am not throwing it around lightly. This government revels in its actions and uses the skin colour of some of its members to try and deflect criticism. It’s transparent, unedifying and reveals just how stupid and nasty they really are.
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
deluded. Im afraid youre stuck in some late 80s timewarp. The sad thing for the left is they have missed the tide of social change has swept past them and theyre stuck Canute like in the sea as the tide keeps coming in.
We live in one of the least racist countries on the planet, The conservatives have moved on and their candidates have got to high office largely on their own merits. They became MPs on the votes of cosntituency selection panels full of those white oldies lefties despise. It is ironic that the "progressives" are so stuck in the past they miss the fact that they are the people who wont do what they criticise others for. Labour cant bring itself to select a female leader - even the DUP have passed that hurdle.
So much as you wish to push the Uncle Tom theory, Im afraid I wont be joining in with you.
It's really rather ironic that you accuse me of being deluded and then write that last sentence!
Its how Ive interpreted what youre saying, you can always it.
Incidentally, is there something wrong with your keyboard? Because that makes no sense at all.
Ok, since youre playing diversion Ill leave it.
It was a serious question. No apostrophes, and missing words that render the rest meaningless. I was wondering if there was an issue with your keyboard, or autocorrect. But if you don't want to answer, you don't have to.
Is someone using the dictation facility? I have trouble with that sometimes, it’s not simply my garbled thought train.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
It's pure Trumpism.
Jez won the 2017 election just like Trump won in 2020.
Id sooner vote Jez than Sir Bland, at least he had policies,
One reason why I remain suspicious of ‘Sir Bland’ is that his policies are essentially Corbyn’s policies stripped of the racism and the gross incompetence.
The catch is, so are rather too many of the Conservatives’ policies and they’ve actually gone all in on the racism and gross incompetence.
So the Asian PM and HS and the black FS are racist ? As is my Iraqi MP ?
That's a pretty woke outlook, saying darkies cannot be racist, only whiteys.
Im not the one pedalling the theory. I merely seek clarification from those who are.
I don't have a racist bone in my body, as evidenced by all my girlfriends being white.
But can confirm some Asian people have racist views.
I am trying to frame a gag about your girlfriends not having a racist bone in their body but its early !!!
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The money will be available at the point of sale. And there seems no other way than massively icnreased council tax/land tax to deal with unearned capital.
What about a nice large wealth tax? On all wealth in excess of £5m? (Definition of 'wealth' TBA). Say 2% pa. So someone with 'wealth' of £10m pays (£10m - £5m) x 2% = £100,000pa.
If it's all in property or other illiquid assets then the tax can be rolled over and paid on death.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The thing is - if you change things away from the status quo, other changes then become plausible - especially given the state of the country's finances.
CGT on primary residencies would be a great quid pro quo if they were exempt from inheritance tax.
To a great degree, they are already. They're placed in a separate band with a huge allowance if left to a direct descendant, with further concessions if the aforesaid descendant lives in the house.
And of course, if the deceased person didn't have anyone living with them, then it's easy to collect the inheritance tax as there's no chain for money to go into or out of.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The thing is - if you change things away from the status quo, other changes then become plausible - especially given the state of the country's finances.
CGT on primary residencies would be a great quid pro quo if they were exempt from inheritance tax.
We’ll never have CGT on primary residences. I doubt we’ll have a net assets based wealth tax any time soon either.
The obvious alternative, which meets many political and fiscal objectives at once, is to replace a portion of income tax or NI (and possibly IHT) with much higher locally raised property taxes, based on the value of land rather than the residence or commercial premises on it.
Maybe but it has 38 times the land area of the UK so has rather more room for them all
It seems slightly cheating to have places like Victoria Island which is slightly larger than GB but has a population of 2k.
Maybe Vancouver Island and Victoria as the capital !!!
32,100 km2
Yeah. All comparisons with Canada are moot. You could build forever in Saskatchewan (apart from the lakes). There's nowhere left to build in BC. But everyone wants to live in BC.
I dunno, most of Saskatchewan is sub-arctic, with brutal winters. It’s a great place to visit (Canada, I mean) but i think more appealing in principle than in practice as a place to move to.
I can see why you’d pick Vancouver over Saskatoon if you did though.
Before moving to Vancouver you might like to read up on the Cascadia subduction zone and potential for major earthquake & tsunami.....
BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s spokesperson says all of the former PM’s WhatsApps and notebooks requested by Covid Inquiry have been handed to Cabinet Office in full.
Now up to Cabinet Office to hand them over to Inquiry or not. Johnson urges them to do so. Deadline 4pm tomorrow.
From a political betting view point, Primeminister Wallace or Mourdant might be close now.
Sunak might be toast. He is already in a very weak position. With Tories on 28% and slaughtered in the locals - Sunak’s WhatsAppGate could be about to finish him. The second Tory PM this parliament brought down by covid.
A worry for Labour as they clearly have Sunak beaten, sub 200 Tory seats even. But PM Penny might trump Labour appeals for a fresh change.
Penny will come across as more centre ground to voters than the increasingly right wing Starmer front bench.
Sunak actually polls better than his party, especially with under 50s and urban professionals.
Mordaunt is too woke for the party membership as leader.
I doubt the whatsapp messages will make the slightest difference to Sunak's position, indeed Tory and RefUK voters think we locked down too early and too long if anything
With the benefit of hindsight, which I fully accept was not available at the time and the risks were very difficult to calculate, I think it is far from clear that we should ever have locked down at all. Protected vulnerable groups, certainly. Ensured proper protection for medical and care staff beyond doubt. But closing schools, factories, pubs, restaurants, etc. I think it was a mistake now.
The problem is, of course, that we didn't have the benefit of hindsight. We had terrible scenes coming out of Northern Italy and New York. We had stories of ambulances running through the night.
And we knew very little of successful treatment methods, and had little idea when - or even if - a vaccine would be forthcoming.
I don't blame the government for the initial lockdown.
I do blame them for the severity of the restrictions, and the length of time they went on for, despite all the evidence that we were getting on top of the disease. It is an absolute disgrace that, even though we had a fantastic headstart with the vaccine roll out, that we lagged so many of our European peers for the removal of restrictions.
Yes, I accept that this is with hindsight. We never got near a collapse of the hospital system, we never used the nightingale hospitals, the projections the government were being given were alarming but entirely wrong. I accept given what was not known, the first lockdown was probably inevitable but I would still want the inquiry to look at whether it was in fact a good idea and whether we should ever do the like again faced with anything similar. The subsequent lockdowns were increasingly bizarre.
the mask mandate was ridiculous and cowardly - masks did F all to stop the virus as proved by Scotland having higher rates of infection whilst having a mask mandate when England eventually relaxed it. The mask thig was especially evil when applied in schools
The problem is that people like to look for silver bullets.
And there are no silver bullets. Mask wearing reduced the spread of Covid.
Now, did that justify mask mandates beyond a certain point? Almost certainly not. But it's ridiculous to claim that mask wearing did not reduce the spread of a airborne viral infection of the respiratory tract.
I had an interesting discussion recently with an American professor of biology. He cited the rapid evolution of covid variants, each replacing the last, as one of the best illustrations of evolution and natural selection that one could ask for.
A secondary thought that arose is this may well explain the fixation on the lab release conspiracy theories abundant on the American right. They don't believe in evolution, therefore covid must have been deliberately constructed by someone.
Re the last para I hadn't thought of that. I noticed there has been a lot of discussion recently in the media with experts and the consensus was still we don't know which theory of the source is correct. The fact that someone who is not an expert can be so certain (whether right or wrong) is telling.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
So have I got this right? A manky old steelworks was bought using taxpayer £millions, sold for around a tenner, and the taxpayer is also footing the bill for the clean up.
What was it the Who said about new bosses in "Won't Get Fooled Again"?
And a few years into the new labour govt, as was the case with new labour, it will be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
I have been highly critical of Labour corruption on these pages citing deceased historic local authority figures like T. Dan Smith and Graham Jenkins. The dismissal of decades of Labour corruption by voters in the RedWall in England and Wales should have been a moment for celebration.
As you allude, the Labour Party have form when it comes to corruption. However it turns out any incoming administration will have to put in a shift if it wants to exceed Johnsonian Conservative levels of rewarding patronage with PPE contracts and accepting political gifts from figures close to the Kremlin. Although I have no doubt with a little effort it can be done.
I remember eagerly voting in New Labour, to move away from the sleaze of the Tory years.
Within a few months they had taken a bung from F1 to exempt them from the Tobacco advertising ban !!!!
The signs were there.
Before the election Arthur Anderson (banned from government work since De Lorean) was *boasting* of donating consultants time to work (for free) for the Labour Party.
Morning all! Day 3 of my tour of England and I wake up to read top quality "bantz" where BJO instructs us all on actually how much of a winner actually Jezbollah was actually.
There is growing disquiet on social media from people reacting to Keith Donkey's piece in the Express about Brexit. How he should be telling them they are wrong and always were rather than trying to placate them and win their votes.
This is absolutism at its finest. Unless you do 100% of what I say you should do, you are a traitor and I don't want to vote for you. The Good News is that as ABC is now the option, you can vote LibDem or Green in suitable constituencies to see Sir Donkey into office.
Puritanically untainted by voting Labour, but still benefitting from binning off the corruption party.
Talking of donkeys. How did the firesale at Teesport go? Sturdy defence of Mayor Ben and stout criticism of McDonald from BBC WATO yesterday.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
If the developers were paying for the cleanup, that would be one thing. But the public are paying for it via South Tees Development Corporation - £450m so far.
So have I got this right? A manky old steelworks was bought using taxpayer £millions, sold for around a tenner, and the taxpayer is also footing the bill for the clean up.
What was it the Who said about new bosses in "Won't Get Fooled Again"?
And a few years into the new labour govt, as was the case with new labour, it will be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
I have been highly critical of Labour corruption on these pages citing deceased historic local authority figures like T. Dan Smith and Graham Jenkins. The dismissal of decades of Labour corruption by voters in the RedWall in England and Wales should have been a moment for celebration.
As you allude, the Labour Party have form when it comes to corruption. However it turns out any incoming administration will have to put in a shift if it wants to exceed Johnsonian Conservative levels of rewarding patronage with PPE contracts and accepting political gifts from figures close to the Kremlin. Although I have no doubt with a little effort it can be done.
I remember eagerly voting in New Labour, to move away from the sleaze of the Tory years.
Within a few months they had taken a bung from F1 to exempt them from the Tobacco advertising ban !!!!
A Bernie, as that sum of money is now colloquially referred.
A win for President Biden and Republican Speaker McCarthy however divisions in both parties.
117 Representatives voted against the Deal. 314 in favour.
149 out of 222 Republicans voted in favour.
165 Democrats out of 213 also in favour. Senator Bernie Sanders has said he will vote against the Deal in the Senate, suggesting he might run against Biden again in the Democratic primaries next year https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65771669
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The money will be available at the point of sale. And there seems no other way than massively icnreased council tax/land tax to deal with unearned capital.
What about a nice large wealth tax? On all wealth in excess of £5m? (Definition of 'wealth' TBA). Say 2% pa. So someone with 'wealth' of £10m pays (£10m - £5m) x 2% = £100,000pa.
If it's all in property or other illiquid assets then the tax can be rolled over and paid on death.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The thing is - if you change things away from the status quo, other changes then become plausible - especially given the state of the country's finances.
CGT on primary residencies would be a great quid pro quo if they were exempt from inheritance tax.
We’ll never have CGT on primary residences. I doubt we’ll have a net assets based wealth tax any time soon either.
The obvious alternative, which meets many political and fiscal objectives at once, is to replace a portion of income tax or NI (and possibly IHT) with much higher locally raised property taxes, based on the value of land rather than the residence or commercial premises on it.
Call me a grumpy middle-aged cynic, but I doubt that replacing IHT with another tax on property is what the Telegraph have in mind.
And the problem- what combination of other tax rises/spending cuts/borrowing is going to make the sums add up- is basically why Trussonomics blew up so rapidly.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The money will be available at the point of sale. And there seems no other way than massively icnreased council tax/land tax to deal with unearned capital.
Good morning
I do not see any politician of any political party even suggested CGT on private homes as it would be political suicide
However, we already have effectively upto £650,000 IHT exemption and in these hard times I see no justification in increasing it
BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s spokesperson says all of the former PM’s WhatsApps and notebooks requested by Covid Inquiry have been handed to Cabinet Office in full.
Now up to Cabinet Office to hand them over to Inquiry or not. Johnson urges them to do so. Deadline 4pm tomorrow.
From a political betting view point, Primeminister Wallace or Mourdant might be close now.
Sunak might be toast. He is already in a very weak position. With Tories on 28% and slaughtered in the locals - Sunak’s WhatsAppGate could be about to finish him. The second Tory PM this parliament brought down by covid.
A worry for Labour as they clearly have Sunak beaten, sub 200 Tory seats even. But PM Penny might trump Labour appeals for a fresh change.
Penny will come across as more centre ground to voters than the increasingly right wing Starmer front bench.
Sunak actually polls better than his party, especially with under 50s and urban professionals.
Mordaunt is too woke for the party membership as leader.
I doubt the whatsapp messages will make the slightest difference to Sunak's position, indeed Tory and RefUK voters think we locked down too early and too long if anything
With the benefit of hindsight, which I fully accept was not available at the time and the risks were very difficult to calculate, I think it is far from clear that we should ever have locked down at all. Protected vulnerable groups, certainly. Ensured proper protection for medical and care staff beyond doubt. But closing schools, factories, pubs, restaurants, etc. I think it was a mistake now.
The problem is, of course, that we didn't have the benefit of hindsight. We had terrible scenes coming out of Northern Italy and New York. We had stories of ambulances running through the night.
And we knew very little of successful treatment methods, and had little idea when - or even if - a vaccine would be forthcoming.
I don't blame the government for the initial lockdown.
I do blame them for the severity of the restrictions, and the length of time they went on for, despite all the evidence that we were getting on top of the disease. It is an absolute disgrace that, even though we had a fantastic headstart with the vaccine roll out, that we lagged so many of our European peers for the removal of restrictions.
Yes, I accept that this is with hindsight. We never got near a collapse of the hospital system, we never used the nightingale hospitals, the projections the government were being given were alarming but entirely wrong. I accept given what was not known, the first lockdown was probably inevitable but I would still want the inquiry to look at whether it was in fact a good idea and whether we should ever do the like again faced with anything similar. The subsequent lockdowns were increasingly bizarre.
the mask mandate was ridiculous and cowardly - masks did F all to stop the virus as proved by Scotland having higher rates of infection whilst having a mask mandate when England eventually relaxed it. The mask thig was especially evil when applied in schools
The problem is that people like to look for silver bullets.
And there are no silver bullets. Mask wearing reduced the spread of Covid.
Now, did that justify mask mandates beyond a certain point? Almost certainly not. But it's ridiculous to claim that mask wearing did not reduce the spread of a airborne viral infection of the respiratory tract.
I had an interesting discussion recently with an American professor of biology. He cited the rapid evolution of covid variants, each replacing the last, as one of the best illustrations of evolution and natural selection that one could ask for.
A secondary thought that arose is this may well explain the fixation on the lab release conspiracy theories abundant on the American right. They don't believe in evolution, therefore covid must have been deliberately constructed by someone.
Re the last para I hadn't thought of that. I noticed there has been a lot of discussion recently in the media with experts and the consensus was still we don't know which theory of the source is correct. The fact that someone who is not an expert can be so certain (whether right or wrong) is telling.
And I hadn’t thought about the very clear link between COVID’s rapid mutations and the obvious veracity of the theory of evolution by natural selection. I expect most creationists haven’t put two and two together either: rather like the flat earth society famously (or apochyphally) boasting of all its members around the globe.
FFS, have these roasters not seen state of the public finances?
More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax.
The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election.
Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance.
The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes.
The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next election manifesto amid growing fears that Labour is plotting to target savings and assets to fund even higher levels of state spending.
This newspaper is receiving a growing number of letters from readers facing intrusive probate investigations into their estates at one of the most difficult moments in their lives.
Writing in this newspaper, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi describes the death duty as “morally wrong” and warns that it is adding inflationary pressure to house prices.
Mr Zahawi writes: “Inheritance tax is that other spectre that haunts us alongside death. As well as being morally wrong to take someone’s assets on their death, it also creates all sorts of inefficient and damaging distortions in our personal finances, and the wider economy.”
They are right, even the average house in London and the SE is now hit by inheritance tax (though at least their is Osborne's exemption for family homes potentially up to £1 million).
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I look forward to seeing CGT applied to family homes instead of IHT.
Won't happen. It would make it pretty near impossible to move house unless you were (a) very rich or (b) renting. The first would be nice but is confined to a select few, and the second is getting more and more difficult anyway.
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
The money will be available at the point of sale. And there seems no other way than massively icnreased council tax/land tax to deal with unearned capital.
Good morning
I do not see any politician of any political party even suggested CGT on private homes as it would be political suicide
However, we already have effectively upto £650,000 IHT exemption and in these hard times I see no justification in increasing it
I wonder if LAB will put anything in their manifesto?
Will they put anything in their manifesto? 😈
The Labour have no policies myth is surprisingly stubborn given they’ve done little else than announce policies across myriad topics in recent months. More so than my own party whom nobody is pointing a similar finger at.
A win for President Biden and Republican Speaker McCarthy however divisions in both parties.
117 Representatives voted against the Deal. 314 in favour.
149 out of 222 Republicans voted in favour.
165 Democrats out of 213 also in favour. Senator Bernie Sanders has said he will vote against the Deal in the Senate, suggesting he might run against Biden again in the Democratic primaries next year https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65771669
Would Sanders "run"? Surely "hobble" would be more accurate.
Maybe but it has 38 times the land area of the UK so has rather more room for them all
It seems slightly cheating to have places like Victoria Island which is slightly larger than GB but has a population of 2k.
Maybe Vancouver Island and Victoria as the capital !!!
32,100 km2
Yeah. All comparisons with Canada are moot. You could build forever in Saskatchewan (apart from the lakes). There's nowhere left to build in BC. But everyone wants to live in BC.
I dunno, most of Saskatchewan is sub-arctic, with brutal winters. It’s a great place to visit (Canada, I mean) but i think more appealing in principle than in practice as a place to move to.
I can see why you’d pick Vancouver over Saskatoon if you did though.
Before moving to Vancouver you might like to read up on the Cascadia subduction zone and potential for major earthquake & tsunami.....
BREAKING: Boris Johnson’s spokesperson says all of the former PM’s WhatsApps and notebooks requested by Covid Inquiry have been handed to Cabinet Office in full.
Now up to Cabinet Office to hand them over to Inquiry or not. Johnson urges them to do so. Deadline 4pm tomorrow.
From a political betting view point, Primeminister Wallace or Mourdant might be close now.
Sunak might be toast. He is already in a very weak position. With Tories on 28% and slaughtered in the locals - Sunak’s WhatsAppGate could be about to finish him. The second Tory PM this parliament brought down by covid.
A worry for Labour as they clearly have Sunak beaten, sub 200 Tory seats even. But PM Penny might trump Labour appeals for a fresh change.
Penny will come across as more centre ground to voters than the increasingly right wing Starmer front bench.
Sunak actually polls better than his party, especially with under 50s and urban professionals.
Mordaunt is too woke for the party membership as leader.
I doubt the whatsapp messages will make the slightest difference to Sunak's position, indeed Tory and RefUK voters think we locked down too early and too long if anything
With the benefit of hindsight, which I fully accept was not available at the time and the risks were very difficult to calculate, I think it is far from clear that we should ever have locked down at all. Protected vulnerable groups, certainly. Ensured proper protection for medical and care staff beyond doubt. But closing schools, factories, pubs, restaurants, etc. I think it was a mistake now.
The problem is, of course, that we didn't have the benefit of hindsight. We had terrible scenes coming out of Northern Italy and New York. We had stories of ambulances running through the night.
And we knew very little of successful treatment methods, and had little idea when - or even if - a vaccine would be forthcoming.
I don't blame the government for the initial lockdown.
I do blame them for the severity of the restrictions, and the length of time they went on for, despite all the evidence that we were getting on top of the disease. It is an absolute disgrace that, even though we had a fantastic headstart with the vaccine roll out, that we lagged so many of our European peers for the removal of restrictions.
Yes, I accept that this is with hindsight. We never got near a collapse of the hospital system, we never used the nightingale hospitals, the projections the government were being given were alarming but entirely wrong. I accept given what was not known, the first lockdown was probably inevitable but I would still want the inquiry to look at whether it was in fact a good idea and whether we should ever do the like again faced with anything similar. The subsequent lockdowns were increasingly bizarre.
the mask mandate was ridiculous and cowardly - masks did F all to stop the virus as proved by Scotland having higher rates of infection whilst having a mask mandate when England eventually relaxed it. The mask thig was especially evil when applied in schools
The problem is that people like to look for silver bullets.
And there are no silver bullets. Mask wearing reduced the spread of Covid.
Now, did that justify mask mandates beyond a certain point? Almost certainly not. But it's ridiculous to claim that mask wearing did not reduce the spread of a airborne viral infection of the respiratory tract.
I had an interesting discussion recently with an American professor of biology. He cited the rapid evolution of covid variants, each replacing the last, as one of the best illustrations of evolution and natural selection that one could ask for.
A secondary thought that arose is this may well explain the fixation on the lab release conspiracy theories abundant on the American right. They don't believe in evolution, therefore covid must have been deliberately constructed by someone.
Re the last para I hadn't thought of that. I noticed there has been a lot of discussion recently in the media with experts and the consensus was still we don't know which theory of the source is correct. The fact that someone who is not an expert can be so certain (whether right or wrong) is telling.
The certainty of non-experts tells us - that non-experts are certain.
The number of Extinction Rebellion people gluing themselves to sporting fixtures has no correlation with the academic truth of Global Warming.
Just because weird, crazy or evil people adopt a theory, doesn't tell us anything about the theory itself. Rational analysis does that.
Comments
Theyre only "not being openly corrupt and grossly incompetent" because theyre not in government. Day one of Bland that all changes. Firstly they get scrutiny and secondly we get to realise what a bunch of talentless dorks have been elected. In Norfolk you could count the number of talented MPs on one hand and still have five fingers left over.
We will have to wait for the GE after for any real change of direction. The public finances and run down nature of collapsing government services give little alternative to enduring the hangover.
Now I can't stand Andy McD, but the liar is Houchen (claiming the NAO had signed it all off when it hadn't) and the coward is Houchen.
First Private Eye and now the Financial Times have dug deeply into the public record over this and placed in public the facts over who was paid what. Houchen keeps lying that the Land Registry figure is incorrect. But won't shed any light or allow any scrutiny.
Ultimately, if the FT and the Eye have libelled him and the developers - what Houchen claims - then legal proceedings could already be going ahead. They only want to fight the Labour MP reporting on their reports and demanding an enquiry - one which Houchen first claimed had already happened (a lie) and now says he wants to happen.
But then again, even BHIA is a better mayor than Jessie Jessie Jessie Jessie Joe Jacobs would have been.
I reckon England win the Ashes 4 nil, maybe 5 nil if the weather holds.
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,snp-submits-westminster-accounts-on-deadline-in-1m-move
They'd be mad to leave it.
And I am quite horrified at your last comment. Ulster people are renowned for being open minded, easy going folk who dont hold grudges, See Eamonn Holmes in the current Schofield farrago.
I think it'll be close, that's 3-2 (not sure in which side's favour) or 2-2.
Plus it is the DavidL prediction you should worry about.
Stout defence on here too. Apparently brownfield sites need cleaning up at vast cost to the circa 90 pence per acre purchaser.
The mood is absolutely febrile.
There is one lady doing a sudoku whilst drinking coffee from her thermos. Another is dismissively scrolling through The Metro on his phone. A third is reading Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, whilst underlining key points in the book. Another is gazing wistfully out of the window. At least eight of them are plugged in with airpods. Someone is trying to sleep but can't get comfortable on the plastic window partition. One guy, there, can't decide what type of electronic music to select on Spotify and keeps changing his album selections.
You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. It's clear that despite the pretended distractions they are all, really, secretly thinking about Rishi and the Tories, and how a reckoning is coming.
But, it remains unsaid. It doesn't need to be said.
With Bairstow and Duckett being dropped midway through as they can’t buy a run against Cummins and Starc.
Not bad for somebody with dementia eh?
Well, actually, not all. Some of it is about their greed, laziness, stupidity and dishonesty. But mostly people from elsewhere.
You’re sounding like Priyamvada Gopal, which is a bad place to be…
But can confirm some Asian people have racist views.
Though as with my predictions the Hundred would fail or Yorkshire have a dismal season, sometimes the inertia is just too great.
It was inevitable given the charges on the business and Tim Beddows sad passing recently.
But for many fans of obscure, old, British TV they have cost us, me included, thousands of pounds but have given us so much pleasure.
RIP Tim and RIP Network
What was it the Who said about new bosses in "Won't Get Fooled Again"?
If you choose to defend it, that’s your decision. But it’s a poor decision.
And there are no silver bullets. Mask wearing reduced the spread of Covid.
Now, did that justify mask mandates beyond a certain point? Almost certainly not. But it's ridiculous to claim that mask wearing did not reduce the spread of a airborne viral infection of the respiratory tract.
"Throughout this process, SNP MPs have remained focused on standing up for Scotland and supporting our hard-working staff.
"We will continue to hold the Tories and pro-Brexit Labour to account for the damage their policies are inflicting on Scotland."
We live in one of the least racist countries on the planet, The conservatives have moved on and their candidates have got to high office largely on their own merits. They became MPs on the votes of cosntituency selection panels full of those white oldies lefties despise. It is ironic that the "progressives" are so stuck in the past they miss the fact that they are the people who wont do what they criticise others for. Labour cant bring itself to select a female leader - even the DUP have passed that hurdle.
So much as you wish to push the Uncle Tom theory, Im afraid I wont be joining in with you.
A secondary thought that arose is this may well explain the fixation on the lab release conspiracy theories abundant on the American right. They don't believe in evolution, therefore covid must have been deliberately constructed by someone.
As you allude, the Labour Party have form when it comes to corruption. However it turns out any incoming administration will have to put in a shift if it wants to exceed Johnsonian Conservative levels of rewarding patronage with PPE contracts and accepting political gifts from figures close to the Kremlin. Although I have no doubt with a little effort it can be done.
In some European nations such as Sweden, plus Australia, Canada and New Zealand there is no inheritance tax now though. In the US inheritance tax only applies to estates over $12.9 million.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/inheritance/the-charts-expose-britains-global-inheritance-tax-shame/
The threshold should certainly be raised to £1 million for all estates in my view from the current £325,000
I suppose in theory moving from a richer area to a poorer area might help, but the reason richer areas are richer is generally to do with jobs. Difficult to move a mortgage without a job.
But there appears to be a decided lack of transparency in how the deal was done.
If millions were paid for the pre-cleanup land, further large sums of money spent, and the land then sold for a tenner, a detailed accounting is the very least the public should expect.
Interesting report on the woke wars at Fenland U, and the reluctance to accept historical analysis, even that based on simple accountancy. One academic "was surprised by the tenor of the responses, and particularly by the fact that the most strident criticism had come from life fellows who were not scholars of Britain or empire. To her, it felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of the project and a recycling of culture-war talking points."
I think one of the surprises of the Senna crash was that in the age of zillion pound F1, a car went on the track with a hideous bodge. It seemed so 1950s.
CGT on primary residencies would be a great quid pro quo if they were exempt from inheritance tax.
Series defeat now nailed on.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/house-price-index/
Even in Scotland the average detached home is now worth £349k ie also above the IHT threshold and the same applies to detached homes across most of the North, Midlands and Wales and NI
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-house-price-index-for-august-2022/uk-house-price-index-scotland-august-2022
Within a few months they had taken a bung from F1 to exempt them from the Tobacco advertising ban !!!!
And good morning everybody
The Aussies stopped match fixing a while back. They'll have to make their runs honestly.
If it's all in property or other illiquid assets then the tax can be rolled over and paid on death.
???
And of course, if the deceased person didn't have anyone living with them, then it's easy to collect the inheritance tax as there's no chain for money to go into or out of.
The obvious alternative, which meets many political and fiscal objectives at once, is to replace a portion of income tax or NI (and possibly IHT) with much higher locally raised property taxes, based on the value of land rather than the residence or commercial premises on it.
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
UK national debt = £2.8 trillion
https://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/
Before the election Arthur Anderson (banned from government work since De Lorean) was *boasting* of donating consultants time to work (for free) for the Labour Party.
Shortly after the election, guess what?
Will they put anything in their manifesto? 😈
117 Representatives voted against the Deal. 314 in favour.
149 out of 222 Republicans voted in favour.
165 Democrats out of 213 also in favour. Senator Bernie Sanders has said he will vote against the Deal in the Senate, suggesting he might run against Biden again in the Democratic primaries next year
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65771669
And the problem- what combination of other tax rises/spending cuts/borrowing is going to make the sums add up- is basically why Trussonomics blew up so rapidly.
I do not see any politician of any political party even suggested CGT on private homes as it would be political suicide
However, we already have effectively upto £650,000 IHT exemption and in these hard times I see no justification in increasing it
The number of Extinction Rebellion people gluing themselves to sporting fixtures has no correlation with the academic truth of Global Warming.
Just because weird, crazy or evil people adopt a theory, doesn't tell us anything about the theory itself. Rational analysis does that.
https://twitter.com/KevinGromley/status/1663974956336545792