Something used to cost £100. It now costs £110 due to inflation. Rishi Rich says that he will halve inflation. We are meant to feel grateful when the price increases to £115.50.
Get the price down to £105 if you want public gratitude, PM.
I feel he's communicated this really badly.
It’s more fundamental than that - he doesn’t realise that most people don’t understand relative rates of change - for instance they think about speed rather than acceleration, and while inflation is about the acceleration of prices, most people think inflation is about the current price.
One thing Bozo knew was that most people know and understand less Han you do so keep things simple.
There are whole A Level Physics exam questions based on the difference between position, velocity and acceleration; even people who can crunch the numbers accurately often fall down on the intuition of what they mean.
And yes, Boris had a much more accurate instinct for what people did and didn't comprehend. Like Mr Ripley, he was talented. Shame he used his talents for evil and self aggrandisement.
@Horse - If you think he has communicated it badly, how might he have communicated it better in your view?
A lot of comments are being based on one silly poll. It's all right knowing the difference between displacement, velocity, and acceleration, or more generally between a quantity and its first and second derivatives, but what about the difference between what people think and how they answer pollsters' questions about what they think? Most people know damned well that cutting inflation would mean prices don't go up as fast as they've been rising.
Many people also know that official inflation figures are c*ck anyway, and if they were to buy the same stuff now that they were buying a year ago they'd have to pay much more than 10% more for it, or whatever figure all the "experts" and politicians are talking about on the telly.
Joxley @Mr_John_Oxley This is part of the politics-as-parlour-game perspective that shows why we got into this mess. Polticians and observers convinced that outcomes don't matter, almost willing themselves that the levers are attached to nothing.
Ian Silvera, Future News @ianjsilvera Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter had a point: “I love British politics because the stakes are so low, but the bitterness and infighting are so high.” 9:30 AM · Jun 11, 2023
Inflation is one of those subjects where the electorate don't have a firm grasp of the technicalities but understand the realities only too well. If inflation halves but necessities are still less affordable than they were because of high prices then voters will rightly still see inflation as a big problem.
Fully agreed - of course most people understand the realities of inflation quite well.
The slightly belated and rarely-sighted Saturday Rawnsley:
The man [Johnson] is a coward. Whenever faced with the consequences of his actions, he ducks. Whenever confronted with a choice that requires some courage, he swerves. Whenever asked to make good on a promise, he betrays. Whenever the choice is fight or flight, he flees.
In the richly storied history of British politics, there has been no ascent, peak, decline and fall quite like it. Some people have a go at trying to compare him with previous tenants of Number 10, but that is a futile quest. We have never seen anyone quite like him in Downing Street before and, if we are a lucky country, we will never do so again. Being Boris Johnson, he is exiting the stage without a shred of humility, a scintilla of remorse or a sliver of recognition that he brought this on himself.
He could have sought to have the committee’s verdict – which I am told is coruscating – overturned by the Commons. Someone who authentically believed himself to have suffered a miscarriage of justice might have attempted that. That he has chosen not to appeal to the Commons is an implied acknowledgment of how low his standing has sunk even among the Conservative MPs who put him in Number 10.
There is no martyr to see here. There is a man who serially debased the high office that he was never fit to hold. There is a man who turned government into a carnival of clowning, chaos and chicanery. There is a man who presided over an appalling regime of lockdown-busting and law-breaking in Downing Street which triggered entirely justified public outrage and was poison for the people’s faith in government.
Some of the officials who saw him at close quarters at Number 10 came away from the experience wondering whether he actually understood the difference between right and wrong and whether he ever really grasped the distinction between the truth and lies. Unless he has entirely succumbed to delusions, there must surely be a portion of his brain which knows that the person responsible for the destruction of his political career stares back him at him whenever he looks in a mirror. Yet he can never acknowledge, at least not in public, what is obvious even to some of those who were once counted among his most ardent supporters. It is the way of the coward to flinch from confronting the inescapable truth that the architect of Boris Johnson’s downfall is Boris Johnson.
Hmmm....he doesn't like him then.
And on a happier subject, congratulations to Manchester City, a Team for all seasons.
On housing, there is a development going up in Leeds of 665 apartments that are not available to buy. Rental only. Starting from £1100 pcm for a one bed. Presumably aimed at young professionals working in the city centre.
Is this now a common thing? Developers becoming mass landlords?
Why sell an asset that
a) has a substantial revenue stream b) appreciates at double digits per year
?
The cult of outsourcing is ending. The next phase of the business world is vertical integration. Anything you do every damn day *is* your core business.
By the way, I'm spending the next week in Crete, staying with a friend in Asproulianos, near Chania. Any recommendations?
Probably treat daytime as being from 4am to 11am, and stay indoors for the rest !
That's what I'm doing, and it's only hitting 28-30C here in the Midlands.
The early, early morning in the hot season in Greece is beautiful. See in the dawn. Take a siesta from late morning till early afternoon. Then, life starts again at about 8pm till late...
One report that the privileges committee agreed unanimously on sanctions and then another implying there was a split and it only went through because of Bernard Jenkins siding with the opposition parties .
I find the latter very hard to believe . I would have thought that the committee would be mindful given the stakes that they needed a unanimous finding .
And what effect will Johnson rubbishing the committee have on the tenure of the final report .
Second poll in Spain today showing a slight narrowing compared to their previous one. Looks like the initial PP bounce is receding. Still early days but my instinct is for a close election which could easily end up with a stalemate between left and right and a grand coalition the only viable option! Glad I don't bet!
Off topic, but not completely, this pic has popped up a couple of times on my FB. It's obviously a fake and not a very good one, but when this is pointed out the poster says so what, it's what it symbolises is the important thing; We've some distance to go before we leave the age of truthiness.
On housing, there is a development going up in Leeds of 665 apartments that are not available to buy. Rental only. Starting from £1100 pcm for a one bed. Presumably aimed at young professionals working in the city centre.
Is this now a common thing? Developers becoming mass landlords?
Why sell an asset that
a) has a substantial revenue stream b) appreciates at double digits per year
?
The cult of outsourcing is ending. The next phase of the business world is vertical integration. Anything you do every damn day *is* your core business.
Why - because patient long-term investors are more resilient to the downside risks of illiquid long-term investments, whereas real estate development firms try to finance individual projects over a few years, so if prices dip a price recovery in five years is of little solace to them.
We all know that Twitter is gibberish, We even know that we know it. We pretend to ourselves that we sift or curate sources, but all we are doing is selecting people/bots that agree with our preconceived stances and post them in an attempt to add authority to our half-assed reckons.
Everybody on here knows it but everybody still does it. We are bad people. I will now scrub myself down with wire wool in an attempt to expiate my sin.
Off topic, but not completely, this pic has popped up a couple of times on my FB. It's obviously a fake and not a very good one, but when this is pointed out the poster says so what, it's what it symbolises is the important thing; We've some distance to go before we leave the age of truthiness.
Off topic, but not completely, this pic has popped up a couple of times on my FB. It's obviously a fake and not a very good one, but when this is pointed out the poster says so what, it's what it symbolises is the important thing; We've some distance to go before we leave the age of truthiness.
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
We all know that Twitter is gibberish, We even know that we know it. We pretend to ourselves that we sift or curate sources, but all we are doing is selecting people/bots that agree with our preconceived stances and post them in an attempt to add authority to our half-assed reckons.
Everybody on here knows it but everybody still does it. We are bad people. I will now scrub myself down with wire wool in an attempt to expiate my sin.
Off topic, but not completely, this pic has popped up a couple of times on my FB. It's obviously a fake and not a very good one, but when this is pointed out the poster says so what, it's what it symbolises is the important thing; We've some distance to go before we leave the age of truthiness.
Sunak seems to be offering Cameronism without the liberal side and Johnsonism without the boosterism, it is an ideology intended to preserve seats, not win them
Is he? I haven't noticed Sunak promising to abolish gay marriage or ban abortion. He doesn't even have the immigration target of below 100,000 a year max Cameron had (despite the rhetoric of Braverman on the boats and it was Boris who ended free movement from the EU) and while more of a fiscal conservative than Boris and Truss the spending cuts he and Hunt are pursuing aren't even to the extent Cameron and Osborne and May and Hammond were pushing let alone more
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
Was away yesterday - did we get another Russian troll or was the Friday one our ration for the week?
Yes and lasted just 12 posts
Indeed I called it out after the first post, it was so obvious Putin himself could have been directly posting
Maybe he was !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just in case Putin is reading this, I would just like to say that Putin is a fascist piece of ****, who needs to be ****ed ** the **** hourly every day by an angry **** in between regular ***** by *****, *****, *****, ****, and *****.
Sunak seems to be offering Cameronism without the liberal side and Johnsonism without the boosterism, it is an ideology intended to preserve seats, not win them
I'll tell you who I blame for all this; Sunak's schoolmates. They should have done the right thing and bullied the exuberance and self-confidence out of him. He should have been called "Fishy Bumcrack" and had his PE kit hurled into the nearest body of water at every opportunity. We are all paying the price for their laxity.
Maybe they did and it drove him to seek a position of power.
To be clear: contrary to headlines, Boris Johnson quitting as an MP has little effect on anything, the Tory party is not in civil war, his action is not a disaster for anyone, he's not about to stand in a by-election anywhere, and his action is unlikely to have an effect on voter intention polls. It will probably put the price of his memoirs up, though. He is unlikely to go on the speech circuit either, because he can't handle his drugs well enough. I blame David Cameron who let him attend cabinet while he was mayor of London, and also Teresa May who appointed him as foreign secretary.
The headlines aren't being fabricated - there is an insurrection against Sunak and Boris is the figurehead. Truss wanted to lead her own insurrection but is mental.
Any "insurrection " won't go anywhere as the MPs won't play. Don't forget it was Tory MPs who removed Boris and Truss. The real game will be after the election but Boris and Truss won't be major players.
Sure. This won't actually overthrow Sunak. But the blood letting will be relentless...
The Tories currently see internal opponents as bigger enemies than the opposition. Like Corbynite Labour that means they will lose.
Sunak seems to be offering Cameronism without the liberal side and Johnsonism without the boosterism, it is an ideology intended to preserve seats, not win them
It doesn't sound very likely to preserve seats either.
The local elections suggested Labour wasn't certain of getting a majority in England certainly either.
Labour may rely on gains from the SNP in Scotland therefore to get even a narrow overall majority UK wide
Won't do them any good, given the nature of the devolution settlement, as you and I have observed before. It's votes and seats in England that they need.
Only up to a point, it is perfectly possible for Labour to win a majority in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs even if the Tories win most seats in England. As Wilson did in 1964 and 1974.
Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs would likely vote on English laws even if SNP MPs wouldn't, hence the worst action of this Conservative government has been to scrap EVEL
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
I think it relates to the observed "reset" in wages, and other things. That over a period of time, prices were squeezed down to unsustainable levels. COVID caused a reset where many people reconsidered their life choices - the same has happened with companies, I think.
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
Common occurrence. We're investing so much/higher costs...but also profits are up.
The local elections suggested Labour wasn't certain of getting a majority in England certainly either.
Labour may rely on gains from the SNP in Scotland therefore to get even a narrow overall majority UK wide
Won't do them any good, given the nature of the devolution settlement, as you and I have observed before. It's votes and seats in England that they need.
Only up to a point, it is perfectly possible for Labour to win a majority in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs even if the Tories win most seats in England. As Wilson did inn 1964 and 1974
Sure, but what happens about "domestic" English policies? The hitherto immediate equation between MPs of the UK voting fiscal policy and the MPs of England voting on actual policies on which the money is to be spent will be broken. [Edit: Missed your edit. But the point stands.]
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
Is it possible that with the consolidation of the supermarkets over the last 20+ years we've now crossed a line where what was a competitive market is no longer? Maybe the conditions have shown the boards they have a captured market.
The slightly belated and rarely-sighted Saturday Rawnsley:
The man [Johnson] is a coward. Whenever faced with the consequences of his actions, he ducks. Whenever confronted with a choice that requires some courage, he swerves. Whenever asked to make good on a promise, he betrays. Whenever the choice is fight or flight, he flees.
In the richly storied history of British politics, there has been no ascent, peak, decline and fall quite like it. Some people have a go at trying to compare him with previous tenants of Number 10, but that is a futile quest. We have never seen anyone quite like him in Downing Street before and, if we are a lucky country, we will never do so again. Being Boris Johnson, he is exiting the stage without a shred of humility, a scintilla of remorse or a sliver of recognition that he brought this on himself.
He could have sought to have the committee’s verdict – which I am told is coruscating – overturned by the Commons. Someone who authentically believed himself to have suffered a miscarriage of justice might have attempted that. That he has chosen not to appeal to the Commons is an implied acknowledgment of how low his standing has sunk even among the Conservative MPs who put him in Number 10.
There is no martyr to see here. There is a man who serially debased the high office that he was never fit to hold. There is a man who turned government into a carnival of clowning, chaos and chicanery. There is a man who presided over an appalling regime of lockdown-busting and law-breaking in Downing Street which triggered entirely justified public outrage and was poison for the people’s faith in government.
Some of the officials who saw him at close quarters at Number 10 came away from the experience wondering whether he actually understood the difference between right and wrong and whether he ever really grasped the distinction between the truth and lies. Unless he has entirely succumbed to delusions, there must surely be a portion of his brain which knows that the person responsible for the destruction of his political career stares back him at him whenever he looks in a mirror. Yet he can never acknowledge, at least not in public, what is obvious even to some of those who were once counted among his most ardent supporters. It is the way of the coward to flinch from confronting the inescapable truth that the architect of Boris Johnson’s downfall is Boris Johnson.
Completely agree with the Rawnsley assessment. But few of these denizens of our third estate were willing to say this when Johnson was in power. Despite the very flaws that brought him down being in plain sight throughout.
Journalism needs to take a long hard look at itself in the mirror.
Plenty of journalists said this for years. Notably absent, with a few honourable exceptions, were right of centre journalists saying it.
His political opponents were dismissed as sour grapes merchants, of course.
He's a very odd man. Why spend so much time fiddling about with a social media app and trolling the libs on it, when he could be presenting as a visionary futurist working on rockets, electric cars and silly hyperloops?
The local elections suggested Labour wasn't certain of getting a majority in England certainly either.
Labour may rely on gains from the SNP in Scotland therefore to get even a narrow overall majority UK wide
Won't do them any good, given the nature of the devolution settlement, as you and I have observed before. It's votes and seats in England that they need.
Only up to a point, it is perfectly possible for Labour to win a majority in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs even if the Tories win most seats in England. As Wilson did inn 1964 and 1974
Sure, but what happens about "domestic" English policies? The hitherto immediate equation between MPs of the UK voting fiscal policy and the MPs of England voting on actual policies on which the money is to be spent will be broken. [Edit: Missed your edit. But the point stands.]
Indeed, as I said abolishing EVEL will be a huge own goal if Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs vote on English laws despite Conservatives and LDs combined having more MPs than Labour in England.
You might even end up with Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs voting to impose Starmer's build all over the greenbelt policy despite most Conservative and LD MPs from the South of England in particular voting against it
The local elections suggested Labour wasn't certain of getting a majority in England certainly either.
Labour may rely on gains from the SNP in Scotland therefore to get even a narrow overall majority UK wide
Won't do them any good, given the nature of the devolution settlement, as you and I have observed before. It's votes and seats in England that they need.
Only up to a point, it is perfectly possible for Labour to win a majority in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs even if the Tories win most seats in England. As Wilson did in 1964 and 1974.
Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs would likely vote on English laws even if SNP MPs wouldn't, hence the worst action of this Conservative government has been to scrap EVEL
It seems unwise to use the phrase “the worst action of this Conservative government”: there’s so many options to choose from!
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
I think it relates to the observed "reset" in wages, and other things. That over a period of time, prices were squeezed down to unsustainable levels. COVID caused a reset where many people reconsidered their life choices - the same has happened with companies, I think.
Interesting thought. Companies considering their work/life balance as it were. Wishing to get away from 'rat race' prices and take time to smell the roses.
We all know that Twitter is gibberish, We even know that we know it. We pretend to ourselves that we sift or curate sources, but all we are doing is selecting people/bots that agree with our preconceived stances and post them in an attempt to add authority to our half-assed reckons.
Everybody on here knows it but everybody still does it. We are bad people. I will now scrub myself down with wire wool in an attempt to expiate my sin.
It’s still a useful tool, but less so that it was. I very rarely post there, but it is still very good for up to the minute news.
The local elections suggested Labour wasn't certain of getting a majority in England certainly either.
Labour may rely on gains from the SNP in Scotland therefore to get even a narrow overall majority UK wide
Won't do them any good, given the nature of the devolution settlement, as you and I have observed before. It's votes and seats in England that they need.
Only up to a point, it is perfectly possible for Labour to win a majority in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs even if the Tories win most seats in England. As Wilson did inn 1964 and 1974
Sure, but what happens about "domestic" English policies? The hitherto immediate equation between MPs of the UK voting fiscal policy and the MPs of England voting on actual policies on which the money is to be spent will be broken. [Edit: Missed your edit. But the point stands.]
Indeed, as I said abolishing EVEL will be a huge own goal if Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs vote on English laws despite Conservatives and LDs combined having more MPs than Labour in England.
You might even end up with Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs voting to impose Starmer's build all over the greenbelt policy despite most Conservative and LD MPs from the South of England in particular voting against it
Did we ever get Ulster MPs voting for Conservative policies in England, by the way? I seem to remember it happening with one or two of them, but may be wrong.
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
Common occurrence. We're investing so much/higher costs...but also profits are up.
Mrs Stodge is still seething after last night's visit to Sainsbury's. Almost all the traditional tills have gone - replaced by self-service for both baskets and trolleys. Only one till open at 8.30pm (all the staff watching the football?).
To be fair, Sainsbury's are perhaps doing the technological investment instead of simply trying to hire more staff and chasing wages upward. It would help if their staff had a scintilla of awareness of the customer experience but Sainsbury's don't see it in those terms - let the customer do the work.
We put the goods in a trolley and then we take them out for scanning and put them back in. It may be productive for Sainsbury's but not for the customer but then of course how many are still going to the supermarket? The advent of home delivery and click/collect means all that traditional walk down the aisles is history.
The next thing is Sainsbury's will dragoon customers foolish enough to visit the store to stack the shelves for them.
No, the next thing will be a Sainsbury's corporate estate of small town centre stores such as the "locals" and large warehouses to service the home delivery market - everything else will go, to be replaced with flats full of young couples who will sit there complaining their Sainsbury's delivery is late...
Second poll in Spain today showing a slight narrowing compared to their previous one. Looks like the initial PP bounce is receding. Still early days but my instinct is for a close election which could easily end up with a stalemate between left and right and a grand coalition the only viable option! Glad I don't bet!
Surely a PP minority government with confidence & supply from Vox is far more likely? I'll be amazed if it's a PP/PSOE grand coalition.
The local elections suggested Labour wasn't certain of getting a majority in England certainly either.
Labour may rely on gains from the SNP in Scotland therefore to get even a narrow overall majority UK wide
Won't do them any good, given the nature of the devolution settlement, as you and I have observed before. It's votes and seats in England that they need.
Only up to a point, it is perfectly possible for Labour to win a majority in the UK thanks to Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs even if the Tories win most seats in England. As Wilson did inn 1964 and 1974
Sure, but what happens about "domestic" English policies? The hitherto immediate equation between MPs of the UK voting fiscal policy and the MPs of England voting on actual policies on which the money is to be spent will be broken. [Edit: Missed your edit. But the point stands.]
Indeed, as I said abolishing EVEL will be a huge own goal if Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs vote on English laws despite Conservatives and LDs combined having more MPs than Labour in England.
You might even end up with Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs voting to impose Starmer's build all over the greenbelt policy despite most Conservative and LD MPs from the South of England in particular voting against it
Did we ever get Ulster MPs voting for Conservative policies in England, by the way? I seem to remember it happening with one or two of them, but may be wrong.
I don't think the DUP ever did even under May, only on UK wide policies (and even then they didn't vote for the Withdrawal Agreement)
He's a very odd man. Why spend so much time fiddling about with a social media app and trolling the libs on it, when he could be presenting as a visionary futurist working on rockets, electric cars and silly hyperloops?
Because he’s a right wing free speech absolutist.
Which means, rather than no limits on what people are allowed to say, allowing people no limits on what they’re obliged to hear.
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
I find this story to be very strange. It's presumably to make Sunak look perfidious, but to me (admittedly not a Boris fan) it just makes it obvious that Boris is engaging in a temper tantrum and thus undermines the ostensibly principled complaints he is making party direction etc.
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
This would have broken a long standing convention were it to be true, but the only evidence appears to be the claims of a serial liar.
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
This is the point - politics is much more about personalities than policies and the deepest and most toxic schisms aren't usually caused by huge policy differences as by the fact the leader of a party or group irritates so many they turn on him/her or leave.
It happens on Council groups all the time - arguably it also happens in Parliamentary groups (look at the Liberal split in 1916 - more because Asquith and Lloyd George fell out then any substantive policy issue). The parallels aren't exact (the SDP break in 1981 was probably more about policy but it also reflected how centrist Labour MPs felt they were being treated in their constituencies) but we can see then.
The breakdown of relationships is what causes political change - the breakdown between No.10 and No.11 which has characterised so many Governments is now being played out here. It's no different to Major and Lamont, Thatcher and Lawson, Blair and Brown etc.
Second poll in Spain today showing a slight narrowing compared to their previous one. Looks like the initial PP bounce is receding. Still early days but my instinct is for a close election which could easily end up with a stalemate between left and right and a grand coalition the only viable option! Glad I don't bet!
Surely a PP minority government with confidence & supply from Vox is far more likely? I'll be amazed if it's a PP/PSOE grand coalition.
That would be hugely unstable. It all went tits up for Ciudadanos when they cosied up with Vox. Their voters have mainly gone to PP. They could easily exit again.
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
I find this story to be very strange. It's presumably to make Sunak look perfidious, but to me (admittedly not a Boris fan) it just makes it obvious that Boris is engaging in a temper tantrum and thus undermines the ostensibly principled complaints he is making party direction etc.
Someone is telling lies, and given his track record it must be BoZo.
Rishi might be telling lies as well, but whining about it just makes the whole party look bad.
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
This would have broken a long standing convention were it to be true, but the only evidence appears to be the claims of a serial liar.
It does have the sniff of "I totally nominated you bro, it's that Rishi who f*cked you".
On the other hand it seems easy to disprove so taking a risk to lie about.
The slightly belated and rarely-sighted Saturday Rawnsley:
The man [Johnson] is a coward. Whenever faced with the consequences of his actions, he ducks. Whenever confronted with a choice that requires some courage, he swerves. Whenever asked to make good on a promise, he betrays. Whenever the choice is fight or flight, he flees.
In the richly storied history of British politics, there has been no ascent, peak, decline and fall quite like it. Some people have a go at trying to compare him with previous tenants of Number 10, but that is a futile quest. We have never seen anyone quite like him in Downing Street before and, if we are a lucky country, we will never do so again. Being Boris Johnson, he is exiting the stage without a shred of humility, a scintilla of remorse or a sliver of recognition that he brought this on himself.
He could have sought to have the committee’s verdict – which I am told is coruscating – overturned by the Commons. Someone who authentically believed himself to have suffered a miscarriage of justice might have attempted that. That he has chosen not to appeal to the Commons is an implied acknowledgment of how low his standing has sunk even among the Conservative MPs who put him in Number 10.
There is no martyr to see here. There is a man who serially debased the high office that he was never fit to hold. There is a man who turned government into a carnival of clowning, chaos and chicanery. There is a man who presided over an appalling regime of lockdown-busting and law-breaking in Downing Street which triggered entirely justified public outrage and was poison for the people’s faith in government.
Some of the officials who saw him at close quarters at Number 10 came away from the experience wondering whether he actually understood the difference between right and wrong and whether he ever really grasped the distinction between the truth and lies. Unless he has entirely succumbed to delusions, there must surely be a portion of his brain which knows that the person responsible for the destruction of his political career stares back him at him whenever he looks in a mirror. Yet he can never acknowledge, at least not in public, what is obvious even to some of those who were once counted among his most ardent supporters. It is the way of the coward to flinch from confronting the inescapable truth that the architect of Boris Johnson’s downfall is Boris Johnson.
Completely agree with the Rawnsley assessment. But few of these denizens of our third estate were willing to say this when Johnson was in power. Despite the very flaws that brought him down being in plain sight throughout.
Journalism needs to take a long hard look at itself in the mirror.
Plenty of journalists said this for years. Notably absent, with a few honourable exceptions, were right of centre journalists saying it.
His political opponents were dismissed as sour grapes merchants, of course.
Parris has been consistently accurate and perceptive on Johnson. Put down to 'Remainer bitterness' needless to say. Or the more lurid "B" derangement syndrome. One more here for the list of things Brexit has messed with. Our capacity and willingness to recognize truth spoken by someone on the other side of the divide.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
He's a very odd man. Why spend so much time fiddling about with a social media app and trolling the libs on it, when he could be presenting as a visionary futurist working on rockets, electric cars and silly hyperloops?
Because he’s a right wing free speech absolutist.
Which means, rather than no limits on what people are allowed to say, allowing people no limits on what they’re obliged to hear.
Hasn't he had people banned for mocking him? Not quite absolutist.
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
This would have broken a long standing convention were it to be true, but the only evidence appears to be the claims of a serial liar.
It does have the sniff of "I totally nominated you bro, it's that Rishi who f*cked you".
On the other hand it seems easy to disprove so taking a risk to lie about.
Has Johnson lied previously about things that were easy to disprove? Yes. Frequently.
Conservative MP Tim Loughton tells @adamboultonTABB & @IsabelHardman that his "hopes for the future of Boris Johnson" is that he would "shut up and go away! And let us get on with running the country"
Loughton: "Boris, thank you very much for your service, now just keep quiet and let the grown-ups in government who want to do government, which our people desperately need them to do government, get on with that job."
On housing, there is a development going up in Leeds of 665 apartments that are not available to buy. Rental only. Starting from £1100 pcm for a one bed. Presumably aimed at young professionals working in the city centre.
Is this now a common thing? Developers becoming mass landlords?
Yeah build to rent. No need for a 20% profit on resale, so derisked in this sense. Massive demand in the private rented sector. Someone owns the building so no leasehold/freehold problems down the line. Economies of scale in running 665 rental units. Most large scale flatted developments are coming forward on this model. It is a low yield, low risk investment.
He's a very odd man. Why spend so much time fiddling about with a social media app and trolling the libs on it, when he could be presenting as a visionary futurist working on rockets, electric cars and silly hyperloops?
He carelessly made an offer he thought he could withdraw, but signed a legally binding commitment (presumably out of ignorance and arrogance). Having borrowed billions to do so, he’s desperately trying to generate cash to pay the billion a year interest bill.
He's a very odd man. Why spend so much time fiddling about with a social media app and trolling the libs on it, when he could be presenting as a visionary futurist working on rockets, electric cars and silly hyperloops?
Because he’s a right wing free speech absolutist.
Which means, rather than no limits on what people are allowed to say, allowing people no limits on what they’re obliged to hear.
I think it means "allowed to say anything provided it's not against the law. Of Turkey."
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
This would have broken a long standing convention were it to be true, but the only evidence appears to be the claims of a serial liar.
It does have the sniff of "I totally nominated you bro, it's that Rishi who f*cked you".
On the other hand it seems easy to disprove so taking a risk to lie about.
Has Johnson lied previously about things that were easy to disprove? Yes. Frequently.
"I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel."
He's a very odd man. Why spend so much time fiddling about with a social media app and trolling the libs on it, when he could be presenting as a visionary futurist working on rockets, electric cars and silly hyperloops?
Because he doesn't have a clue what he is doing nor talking about
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Second poll in Spain today showing a slight narrowing compared to their previous one. Looks like the initial PP bounce is receding. Still early days but my instinct is for a close election which could easily end up with a stalemate between left and right and a grand coalition the only viable option! Glad I don't bet!
Surely a PP minority government with confidence & supply from Vox is far more likely? I'll be amazed if it's a PP/PSOE grand coalition.
The question is whether we will see a pattern of populist parties supporting but not actively joining forces with more traditional centre-right parties to prevent the formation of such "grand" coalitions.
We have the Sweden Democrats who support the centre-right Moderate Government - we could see the CDU/CSU form a minority with AfD support after the next Bundestag election and in Spain PP could form a minority with VOX providing confidence and supply.
He's a very odd man. Why spend so much time fiddling about with a social media app and trolling the libs on it, when he could be presenting as a visionary futurist working on rockets, electric cars and silly hyperloops?
He carelessly made an offer he thought he could withdraw, but signed a legally binding commitment (presumably out of ignorance and arrogance). Having borrowed billions to do so, he’s desperately trying to generate cash to pay the billion a year interest bill.
I was thinking more why he spends so much personal time on their than the purchase itself, which as you note undermines his claims to business genius - either he did want to pull out of the deal, in which case his pretending to care that much about it is phony, or he was faking wanting to pull out of the deal in order to get a better deal, and he failed.
This does sound plausible as an explanation which allows Boris's cronies to believe there was foulnes at play.
Though it does also mean that Dorries and Adams could have gotten what they wanted by signalling to quit, and have now quit to get nothing - and in doing so on the day of the list being announced look like angry toddlers. https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1667598065622999043/photo/1
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
Common occurrence. We're investing so much/higher costs...but also profits are up.
Mrs Stodge is still seething after last night's visit to Sainsbury's. Almost all the traditional tills have gone - replaced by self-service for both baskets and trolleys. Only one till open at 8.30pm (all the staff watching the football?).
To be fair, Sainsbury's are perhaps doing the technological investment instead of simply trying to hire more staff and chasing wages upward. It would help if their staff had a scintilla of awareness of the customer experience but Sainsbury's don't see it in those terms - let the customer do the work.
We put the goods in a trolley and then we take them out for scanning and put them back in. It may be productive for Sainsbury's but not for the customer but then of course how many are still going to the supermarket? The advent of home delivery and click/collect means all that traditional walk down the aisles is history.
The next thing is Sainsbury's will dragoon customers foolish enough to visit the store to stack the shelves for them.
No, the next thing will be a Sainsbury's corporate estate of small town centre stores such as the "locals" and large warehouses to service the home delivery market - everything else will go, to be replaced with flats full of young couples who will sit there complaining their Sainsbury's delivery is late...
But encouraging firms to use more technology, often at the force of gunpoint, so they didn't need so many staff...
... That was meant to be a Brexit Bonus, wasn't it?
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
This is the point - politics is much more about personalities than policies and the deepest and most toxic schisms aren't usually caused by huge policy differences as by the fact the leader of a party or group irritates so many they turn on him/her or leave.
It happens on Council groups all the time - arguably it also happens in Parliamentary groups (look at the Liberal split in 1916 - more because Asquith and Lloyd George fell out then any substantive policy issue). The parallels aren't exact (the SDP break in 1981 was probably more about policy but it also reflected how centrist Labour MPs felt they were being treated in their constituencies) but we can see then.
The breakdown of relationships is what causes political change - the breakdown between No.10 and No.11 which has characterised so many Governments is now being played out here. It's no different to Major and Lamont, Thatcher and Lawson, Blair and Brown etc.
Or Laurel and Hardy, which may be apt for Sunak and Johnson.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
Common occurrence. We're investing so much/higher costs...but also profits are up.
Mrs Stodge is still seething after last night's visit to Sainsbury's. Almost all the traditional tills have gone - replaced by self-service for both baskets and trolleys. Only one till open at 8.30pm (all the staff watching the football?).
To be fair, Sainsbury's are perhaps doing the technological investment instead of simply trying to hire more staff and chasing wages upward. It would help if their staff had a scintilla of awareness of the customer experience but Sainsbury's don't see it in those terms - let the customer do the work.
We put the goods in a trolley and then we take them out for scanning and put them back in. It may be productive for Sainsbury's but not for the customer but then of course how many are still going to the supermarket? The advent of home delivery and click/collect means all that traditional walk down the aisles is history.
The next thing is Sainsbury's will dragoon customers foolish enough to visit the store to stack the shelves for them.
No, the next thing will be a Sainsbury's corporate estate of small town centre stores such as the "locals" and large warehouses to service the home delivery market - everything else will go, to be replaced with flats full of young couples who will sit there complaining their Sainsbury's delivery is late...
But encouraging firms to use more technology, often at the force of gunpoint, so they didn't need so many staff...
... That was meant to be a Brexit Bonus, wasn't it?
Hmmm.
Don't Sainsbury have a "scan as you put it in the trolley option" like Tesco?
He's a very odd man. Why spend so much time fiddling about with a social media app and trolling the libs on it, when he could be presenting as a visionary futurist working on rockets, electric cars and silly hyperloops?
He carelessly made an offer he thought he could withdraw, but signed a legally binding commitment (presumably out of ignorance and arrogance). Having borrowed billions to do so, he’s desperately trying to generate cash to pay the billion a year interest bill.
“His actions led me and I think a lot of other folks in the industry to think about, ‘Hey, are we kind of doing this as much as we should?’” he said. “Could we make our companies better by pushing on some of the same principles?…My sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that those were good changes, but who may have been a little shy about doing them.”
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
Second poll in Spain today showing a slight narrowing compared to their previous one. Looks like the initial PP bounce is receding. Still early days but my instinct is for a close election which could easily end up with a stalemate between left and right and a grand coalition the only viable option! Glad I don't bet!
Surely a PP minority government with confidence & supply from Vox is far more likely? I'll be amazed if it's a PP/PSOE grand coalition.
The question is whether we will see a pattern of populist parties supporting but not actively joining forces with more traditional centre-right parties to prevent the formation of such "grand" coalitions.
We have the Sweden Democrats who support the centre-right Moderate Government - we could see the CDU/CSU form a minority with AfD support after the next Bundestag election and in Spain PP could form a minority with VOX providing confidence and supply.
Indeed. Although the two polls published today show 176 and 177 seats for PP/Vox. With 176 being a majority. That Podemos have folded into Sumar has changed the electoral maths. (These are the first two polls without Podemos). They are still on c.15%. Which was their combined score separately. But that's worth about 44 seats now, as opposed to 30 previously.
@IsabelOakeshott 1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
This would have broken a long standing convention were it to be true, but the only evidence appears to be the claims of a serial liar.
It does have the sniff of "I totally nominated you bro, it's that Rishi who f*cked you".
On the other hand it seems easy to disprove so taking a risk to lie about.
Has Johnson lied previously about things that were easy to disprove? Yes. Frequently.
"I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel."
"Inverted pyramid of piffle" was very Boris - in that piffle sounds like it means 'nonsense', but doesn't; it means "unimportant talk".
Second poll in Spain today showing a slight narrowing compared to their previous one. Looks like the initial PP bounce is receding. Still early days but my instinct is for a close election which could easily end up with a stalemate between left and right and a grand coalition the only viable option! Glad I don't bet!
Surely a PP minority government with confidence & supply from Vox is far more likely? I'll be amazed if it's a PP/PSOE grand coalition.
PP and Vox still on 47% combined compared to PSOE and Sumar on 41% combined in the latest poll
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
Common occurrence. We're investing so much/higher costs...but also profits are up.
Mrs Stodge is still seething after last night's visit to Sainsbury's. Almost all the traditional tills have gone - replaced by self-service for both baskets and trolleys. Only one till open at 8.30pm (all the staff watching the football?).
To be fair, Sainsbury's are perhaps doing the technological investment instead of simply trying to hire more staff and chasing wages upward. It would help if their staff had a scintilla of awareness of the customer experience but Sainsbury's don't see it in those terms - let the customer do the work.
We put the goods in a trolley and then we take them out for scanning and put them back in. It may be productive for Sainsbury's but not for the customer but then of course how many are still going to the supermarket? The advent of home delivery and click/collect means all that traditional walk down the aisles is history.
The next thing is Sainsbury's will dragoon customers foolish enough to visit the store to stack the shelves for them.
No, the next thing will be a Sainsbury's corporate estate of small town centre stores such as the "locals" and large warehouses to service the home delivery market - everything else will go, to be replaced with flats full of young couples who will sit there complaining their Sainsbury's delivery is late...
Home delivery is still very much a minority interest - and, frankly, there aren't enough delivery drivers, vans or space on the roads themselves to change that. Besides which, when it comes to anything fresh, you order a delivery and there's nothing to stop the pick and packer from sending you a load of stuff that goes out of date the same day or next, whereas if you go to the supermarket yourself you can shove it out the way and grab the packet from the back of the shelf that they don't want you to find. I therefore doubt that regular grocery shopping trips are about to become a thing of the past any time soon.
Self-scanning tills are OK, but the zapper things you pick up at the entrance are better - then you've got both the convenience of not having to stand at an old-fashioned checkout behind some Mummy with several screaming kids buying enough to feed half the town, AND you can scan and pack everything as you're going round the shop so you're back out again in a flash, save for that one occasion in ten or so when it makes you go through the random check. It's my one gripe with the local M&S: Tesco rolled out zappers years ago, so why can't you do likewise?
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
That's pretty bigoted, CHB. You think people who are tenants don't need anywhere to live?
Are you seriously arguing that the 5-10m in this country who can't qualify for a mortgage should all be living with their children in cardboard boxes under Vauxhall Bridge?
Second poll in Spain today showing a slight narrowing compared to their previous one. Looks like the initial PP bounce is receding. Still early days but my instinct is for a close election which could easily end up with a stalemate between left and right and a grand coalition the only viable option! Glad I don't bet!
Surely a PP minority government with confidence & supply from Vox is far more likely? I'll be amazed if it's a PP/PSOE grand coalition.
The question is whether we will see a pattern of populist parties supporting but not actively joining forces with more traditional centre-right parties to prevent the formation of such "grand" coalitions.
We have the Sweden Democrats who support the centre-right Moderate Government - we could see the CDU/CSU form a minority with AfD support after the next Bundestag election and in Spain PP could form a minority with VOX providing confidence and supply.
Germany I think would see another CDU/CSU SPD grand coalition however, even under Merz the CDU still won't do deals with the AfD as the SPD wouldn't with Linke
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
And to be fair, the visible signs of continued building are evident throughout the borough.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
So done properties get sold. This temporarily slacked a tiny party of the demand for properties to buy.
Meanwhile prices rocket in the rental sector because of the scarcity of rental properties.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
That's pretty bigoted, CHB. You think people who are tenants don't need anywhere to live?
Are you seriously arguing that the 5-10m in this country who can't qualify for a mortgage should all be living with their children in cardboard boxes under Vauxhall Bridge?
So instead of people living the properties, we now have… people living in the properties.
Something used to cost £100. It now costs £110 due to inflation. Rishi Rich says that he will halve inflation. We are meant to feel grateful when the price increases to £115.50.
Get the price down to £105 if you want public gratitude, PM.
I see your point, but actually deflation is generally seen as an economically even worse problem than inflation as people defer spending if prices are expected to fall.
In general, price stability not dropping prices is the appropriate macroeconomic aim.
This is a point I have made about falling house prices and its impact on housebuilding. People like the idea that falling house prices and an increase in housebuilding could go together, but the reality is that when house prices are falling people are less likely to borrow large sums of money to buy premium new build houses, so there would be less demand for this type of housing, so the most probable outcome is that housebuilding also falls.
I think you've got it backwards.
We don't want a fall in prices to lead to an increase in construction.
We want an increase in construction to lead to a fall in prices.
Increased competition absolutely can lead to prices stabilising or falling. And if competition increases, then prices stabilise or fall, then housebuilding falls back, then it will be because the shortage of houses in the system has resolved. Although unless population growth stops entirely, there will always be a need for construction.
There was no let up in the production of various goods that have fallen in price, massively, over the decades.
Half the cost of building work is directly wages. That is half is bricks and roof tiles, half labour. Approximately. But the material themselves have labour inputs. And the materials for the materials.
Some guesses put the ultimate labour portion of a house at 70-80%.
Labour cost is a direct function, these days, of housing costs. The biggest cost for workers is their own housing!
So when house prices actually fall, for a period, labour costs will begin to trend down (assuming a competitive labour market). This in turn will make it cheaper to build houses.
In addition, the U.K. building industry is low productivity, compared to many other countries. Investment in non-exotic machinery - mini cranes and small diggers, say - could halve the work force on a house.
Its worth noting that half the building work cost of houses may be labour but that's not half the cost of the house.
An incredibly significant portion of the cost of housing is the cost of land, and almost all of the cost of land is planning permission.
An acre of farmland can cost £12-25k while an acre of land with planning permission for a house can be worth hundreds of thousands.
Eliminate that discrepancy and the cost of housing would collapse, without affecting labour costs. And as you say, if its cheaper to house people, then everything including labour becomes cheaper.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
That's pretty bigoted, CHB. You think people who are tenants don't need anywhere to live?
Are you seriously arguing that the 5-10m in this country who can't qualify for a mortgage should all be living with their children in cardboard boxes under Vauxhall Bridge?
That's a bit unfair. CHB is probably hoping that enough properties get dumped on the market at once that ludicrous property prices are forced down a bit and some of those who can't buy at the moment will be able to afford to. Besides which, distressed landlords selling up doesn't mean the homes cease to exist. Those that aren't bought to live in will end up being recycled back into the lettings market eventually.
Ultimately, the only sustainable solution to the housing shortage is to build more houses. But in the meantime you can understand why landlords aren't very popular. The commoditisation of residential property, in which more and more potential buyers are priced out and made to pay a wealthier person's mortgage off through rent instead, is all part and parcel of a very warped economy, the main purpose of which would appear to be to redistribute wealth upwards from poor, predominantly younger people to rich, predominantly older people.
I am pretty sure that a lot of companies are jacking up prices and using general reports of inflation to hide behind. The New Statesman had a very fine article on it last week and termed the phenomenon Greedflation.
That reminds me of US lefties claiming that inflation under the Biden Presidency wasn’t “real” inflation and companies didn’t have to put up prices. While celebrating pay increases.
There is an element of “reset” - in recent years, suppliers to supermarkets were often squeezed to breaking point. They are now simply refusing to supply some items at hyper low prices.
That doesn’t explain the supermarkets’ improved margins. At a time of rocketing inflation, corporate profitability, EBITDA, margins etc should generally be lower, not higher as so many are currently.
Common occurrence. We're investing so much/higher costs...but also profits are up.
Mrs Stodge is still seething after last night's visit to Sainsbury's. Almost all the traditional tills have gone - replaced by self-service for both baskets and trolleys. Only one till open at 8.30pm (all the staff watching the football?).
To be fair, Sainsbury's are perhaps doing the technological investment instead of simply trying to hire more staff and chasing wages upward. It would help if their staff had a scintilla of awareness of the customer experience but Sainsbury's don't see it in those terms - let the customer do the work.
We put the goods in a trolley and then we take them out for scanning and put them back in. It may be productive for Sainsbury's but not for the customer but then of course how many are still going to the supermarket? The advent of home delivery and click/collect means all that traditional walk down the aisles is history.
The next thing is Sainsbury's will dragoon customers foolish enough to visit the store to stack the shelves for them.
No, the next thing will be a Sainsbury's corporate estate of small town centre stores such as the "locals" and large warehouses to service the home delivery market - everything else will go, to be replaced with flats full of young couples who will sit there complaining their Sainsbury's delivery is late...
Home delivery is still very much a minority interest - and, frankly, there aren't enough delivery drivers, vans or space on the roads themselves to change that. Besides which, when it comes to anything fresh, you order a delivery and there's nothing to stop the pick and packer from sending you a load of stuff that goes out of date the same day or next, whereas if you go to the supermarket yourself you can shove it out the way and grab the packet from the back of the shelf that they don't want you to find. I therefore doubt that regular grocery shopping trips are about to become a thing of the past any time soon.
Self-scanning tills are OK, but the zapper things you pick up at the entrance are better - then you've got both the convenience of not having to stand at an old-fashioned checkout behind some Mummy with several screaming kids buying enough to feed half the town, AND you can scan and pack everything as you're going round the shop so you're back out again in a flash, save for that one occasion in ten or so when it makes you go through the random check. It's my one gripe with the local M&S: Tesco rolled out zappers years ago, so why can't you do likewise?
When I go to Sainsbury’s, I use the app based scanner - you pack your own bags as you go. Payment is at the end - they don’t look at your bags*
Of the various supermarket systems, it actually works rather well.
*every now and again the system asks you get a few items checked by a member of staff.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
So done properties get sold. This temporarily slacked a tiny party of the demand for properties to buy.
Meanwhile prices rocket in the rental sector because of the scarcity of rental properties.
In terms of roofs over people's heads, it doesn't make much difference.
In terms of Property Owning Democracy, people feeling they have a stake in a place and are building up a pot of wealth, it matters a lot.
Either way, we haven't built enough homes for ages.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
That's pretty bigoted, CHB. You think people who are tenants don't need anywhere to live?
Are you seriously arguing that the 5-10m in this country who can't qualify for a mortgage should all be living with their children in cardboard boxes under Vauxhall Bridge?
So instead of people living the properties, we now have… people living in the properties.
This will alter the housing crisis how, exactly?
As I pointed out, millions cannot qualify for a mortgage to access such a property as Owner Occupiers. Where will they live?
There is also the issue I have pointed out repeatedly that .. as per the English Housing Survey .. the PRS is occupied far more densely than the Owner Occupied segment, so you will be making more people homeless, and will make the housing crisis far worse.
I refer you to the figures for households with 2 or more spare bedrooms in the recent versions of the English Housing Survey, and how they are overwhelmingly concentrated in the OO sector.
Perhaps we need to be forcing such people to take a lodger.
In reality we need a larger PRS in this country, not a smaller one, as we have one of the smallest availabilities of rental property in Western Europe.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
That's pretty bigoted, CHB. You think people who are tenants don't need anywhere to live?
Are you seriously arguing that the 5-10m in this country who can't qualify for a mortgage should all be living with their children in cardboard boxes under Vauxhall Bridge?
Get rid of the parasites who want to have tenants pay their BTL mortgage for them as rent and make a profit on that on top, and the people who can't qualify for a mortgage at present might actually be able to do so.
If a tenant can afford to pay for their landlord's mortgage, they an afford to pay for their own. Rent should not be enough to cover a BTL mortgage in a healthy economy.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
That's pretty bigoted, CHB. You think people who are tenants don't need anywhere to live?
Are you seriously arguing that the 5-10m in this country who can't qualify for a mortgage should all be living with their children in cardboard boxes under Vauxhall Bridge?
So instead of people living the properties, we now have… people living in the properties.
This will alter the housing crisis how, exactly?
As I pointed out, millions cannot qualify for a mortgage to access such a property as Owner Occupiers. Where will they live?
There is also the issue I have pointed out repeatedly that .. as per the English Housing Survey .. the PRS is occupied far more densely than the Owner Occupied segment, so you will be making more people homeless, and will make the housing crisis far worse.
I refer you to the figures for households with 2 or more spare bedrooms in the recent versions of the English Housing Survey, and how they are overwhelmingly concentrated in the OO sector.
Perhaps we need to be forcing such people to take a lodger.
In reality we need a larger PRS in this country, not a smaller one, as we have one of the smallest availabilities of rental property in Western Europe.
That the rental sector is more densely populated than the owner occupied sector has bugger all to do with the fact they're renting and instead purely a correlation that is a function of demographics.
Young families with children are more likely to rent, they have more people living in the house. If they buy, then they're not going to kick their kids out of the home.
Old pensioners are more likely to owner occupy, they have fewer people living in the house as their children now live in homes of their own - and their kids and grandkids are more likely to rent than the grandparents are.
Only 25% of owner-occupied homes have dependent children in them. The rented sector is massively higher, because of demographics not because of ownership.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
Good, take the houses back and people that actually need to live in them can have them instead
Doesn't work like that though - especially round here.
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
So done properties get sold. This temporarily slacked a tiny party of the demand for properties to buy.
Meanwhile prices rocket in the rental sector because of the scarcity of rental properties.
Half agree.
Rental prices haven't rocketed and they don't (that claim is a myth) - except in the deluded heads of thick story-hunting journos wanting to drive the outrage bus who only look at the advertised prices of the 1-2% (my estimate) of properties shown today on Zoopla or Rightmove or a sample from some other estate agent.
Look at the ONS index of a wider survey of rental prices, and the PRS rental increase for the current 12 months to April 2023 is under 5% - which is well short of inflation. Here are the numbers for the last several years.
AIUI, Mr Osborne admitted some time ago that his deliberate targeting of the PRS was a mistake.
Comments
A lot of comments are being based on one silly poll. It's all right knowing the difference between displacement, velocity, and acceleration, or more generally between a quantity and its first and second derivatives, but what about the difference between what people think and how they answer pollsters' questions about what they think? Most people know damned well that cutting inflation would mean prices don't go up as fast as they've been rising.
Many people also know that official inflation figures are c*ck anyway, and if they were to buy the same stuff now that they were buying a year ago they'd have to pay much more than 10% more for it, or whatever figure all the "experts" and politicians are talking about on the telly.
Meanwhile, I reckon it's the third derivative of displacement that's right up Boris Johnson's street:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_(physics)
However if there is one thing we can still be proud of, it's providing entertainment to foreigners.
a) has a substantial revenue stream
b) appreciates at double digits per year
?
The cult of outsourcing is ending. The next phase of the business world is vertical integration. Anything you do every damn day *is* your core business.
One report that the privileges committee agreed unanimously on sanctions and then another implying there was a split and it only went through because of Bernard Jenkins siding with the opposition parties .
I find the latter very hard to believe . I would have thought that the committee would be mindful given the stakes that they needed a unanimous finding .
And what effect will Johnson rubbishing the committee have on the tenure of the final report .
We've some distance to go before we leave the age of truthiness.
Comfortable.
Everybody on here knows it but everybody still does it. We are bad people. I will now scrub myself down with wire wool in an attempt to expiate my sin.
https://www.flyingpenguin.com/?p=22683
Edit: as one comment notes, not originally a fake but a painting which someone monkeyed about with and converted to monochrome.
https://twitter.com/hangar7art/status/965677773283979264
https://www.flyingpenguin.com/?p=22683
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/09/elon-musk-says-twitter-is-going-to-get-rid-of-the-block-feature-enabling-greater-harassment/
We are never going to go to Mars...
Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs would likely vote on English laws even if SNP MPs wouldn't, hence the worst action of this Conservative government has been to scrap EVEL
https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1667854977048489987
Notably absent, with a few honourable exceptions, were right of centre journalists saying it.
His political opponents were dismissed as sour grapes merchants, of course.
You might even end up with Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs voting to impose Starmer's build all over the greenbelt policy despite most Conservative and LD MPs from the South of England in particular voting against it
Apparently they are TARDISes
EXCLUSIVE: Crashed UFO recovered by the US military...much larger inside than out.
By JOSH BOSWELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1667849684105281536
What's the betting Boris is going to be announced as their new editor? (Or "consulting editor" or somesuch...)
1/2 As I revealed on @TalkTV and @bbclaurak this morning, Boris believes Sunak’s best friend and political Secretary James Forsyth secretly removed 5 names from his honours nomination list *before* it was submitted to the honours committee. This broke a long standing convention…
The most interesting thing is how many of the recent interviewees are insiders.
I very rarely post there, but it is still very good for up to the minute news.
To be fair, Sainsbury's are perhaps doing the technological investment instead of simply trying to hire more staff and chasing wages upward. It would help if their staff had a scintilla of awareness of the customer experience but Sainsbury's don't see it in those terms - let the customer do the work.
We put the goods in a trolley and then we take them out for scanning and put them back in. It may be productive for Sainsbury's but not for the customer but then of course how many are still going to the supermarket? The advent of home delivery and click/collect means all that traditional walk down the aisles is history.
The next thing is Sainsbury's will dragoon customers foolish enough to visit the store to stack the shelves for them.
No, the next thing will be a Sainsbury's corporate estate of small town centre stores such as the "locals" and large warehouses to service the home delivery market - everything else will go, to be replaced with flats full of young couples who will sit there complaining their Sainsbury's delivery is late...
Which means, rather than no limits on what people are allowed to say, allowing people no limits on what they’re obliged to hear.
It happens on Council groups all the time - arguably it also happens in Parliamentary groups (look at the Liberal split in 1916 - more because Asquith and Lloyd George fell out then any substantive policy issue). The parallels aren't exact (the SDP break in 1981 was probably more about policy but it also reflected how centrist Labour MPs felt they were being treated in their constituencies) but we can see then.
The breakdown of relationships is what causes political change - the breakdown between No.10 and No.11 which has characterised so many Governments is now being played out here. It's no different to Major and Lamont, Thatcher and Lawson, Blair and Brown etc.
It all went tits up for Ciudadanos when they cosied up with Vox. Their voters have mainly gone to PP. They could easily exit again.
Rishi might be telling lies as well, but whining about it just makes the whole party look bad.
Which i guess is BoZo's aim.
On the other hand it seems easy to disprove so taking a risk to lie about.
More than a third of buy-to-let landlords who have mortgages on their properties are at risk of being pushed into the red amid soaring borrowing costs and stricter tax rules.
The average buy-to-let mortgage rate is now just over 6 per cent — if it hits 6.5 per cent, 44 per cent of mortgaged landlords will not be making enough from rent to cover their costs, according to the estate agency Hamptons. This would rise to 54 per cent if the average rate were to reach 7 per cent.
...
Landlords have benefited from years of cheap debt and low interest rates but higher borrowing costs now could wipe out their profits.
David Fell from Hamptons said: “With average interest rates so high the number of landlords entering loss-making territory increases fairly quickly. Given that higher-rate taxpayers cannot offset all their mortgage interest for tax, some will not be making any money at all.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3c622aa4-06bf-11ee-9bf2-8ca4db35d928?shareToken=8c14ddadc83023aa023c9b8b1c82e370
Conservative MP Tim Loughton tells @adamboultonTABB & @IsabelHardman that his "hopes for the future of Boris Johnson" is that he would "shut up and go away! And let us get on with running the country"
Loughton: "Boris, thank you very much for your service, now just keep quiet and let the grown-ups in government who want to do government, which our people desperately need them to do government, get on with that job."
Having borrowed billions to do so, he’s desperately trying to generate cash to pay the billion a year interest bill.
Weekend scoop with @ZoeSchiffer for subscribers: Twitter is stiffing Google on its payments for Google Cloud, and significant parts of the company’s trust and safety infrastructure could collapse by the end of the month
https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1667633652392665088
We have the Sweden Democrats who support the centre-right Moderate Government - we could see the CDU/CSU form a minority with AfD support after the next Bundestag election and in Spain PP could form a minority with VOX providing confidence and supply.
Though it does also mean that Dorries and Adams could have gotten what they wanted by signalling to quit, and have now quit to get nothing - and in doing so on the day of the list being announced look like angry toddlers.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1667598065622999043/photo/1
The days of the BtL landlord just owning a property (it's my wife's old flat) and making a little off renting that are indeed over. The private rental market, certainly in Newham, is becoming the preserve of a very few landlords with large portfolios (say 80-100 properties) who buy up houses, split them into flats and then rent the flats.
They can afford to do this because the demand for rental property in this part of London remains unrelenting.
... That was meant to be a Brexit Bonus, wasn't it?
Don't Sainsbury have a "scan as you put it in the trolley option" like Tesco?
(Personally I do Aldi or Morrisons)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-credits-elon-musk-175933916.html
“His actions led me and I think a lot of other folks in the industry to think about, ‘Hey, are we kind of doing this as much as we should?’” he said. “Could we make our companies better by pushing on some of the same principles?…My sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that those were good changes, but who may have been a little shy about doing them.”
https://search.savills.com/list/flats-for-sale/england/london/stratford/e15
That Podemos have folded into Sumar has changed the electoral maths. (These are the first two polls without Podemos).
They are still on c.15%. Which was their combined score separately.
But that's worth about 44 seats now, as opposed to 30 previously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_Spanish_general_election
Self-scanning tills are OK, but the zapper things you pick up at the entrance are better - then you've got both the convenience of not having to stand at an old-fashioned checkout behind some Mummy with several screaming kids buying enough to feed half the town, AND you can scan and pack everything as you're going round the shop so you're back out again in a flash, save for that one occasion in ten or so when it makes you go through the random check. It's my one gripe with the local M&S: Tesco rolled out zappers years ago, so why can't you do likewise?
Are you seriously arguing that the 5-10m in this country who can't qualify for a mortgage should all be living with their children in cardboard boxes under Vauxhall Bridge?
Meanwhile prices rocket in the rental sector because of the scarcity of rental properties.
This will alter the housing crisis how, exactly?
An incredibly significant portion of the cost of housing is the cost of land, and almost all of the cost of land is planning permission.
An acre of farmland can cost £12-25k while an acre of land with planning permission for a house can be worth hundreds of thousands.
Eliminate that discrepancy and the cost of housing would collapse, without affecting labour costs. And as you say, if its cheaper to house people, then everything including labour becomes cheaper.
Ultimately, the only sustainable solution to the housing shortage is to build more houses. But in the meantime you can understand why landlords aren't very popular. The commoditisation of residential property, in which more and more potential buyers are priced out and made to pay a wealthier person's mortgage off through rent instead, is all part and parcel of a very warped economy, the main purpose of which would appear to be to redistribute wealth upwards from poor, predominantly younger people to rich, predominantly older people.
Of the various supermarket systems, it actually works rather well.
*every now and again the system asks you get a few items checked by a member of staff.
In terms of Property Owning Democracy, people feeling they have a stake in a place and are building up a pot of wealth, it matters a lot.
Either way, we haven't built enough homes for ages.
There is also the issue I have pointed out repeatedly that .. as per the English Housing Survey .. the PRS is occupied far more densely than the Owner Occupied segment, so you will be making more people homeless, and will make the housing crisis far worse.
I refer you to the figures for households with 2 or more spare bedrooms in the recent versions of the English Housing Survey, and how they are overwhelmingly concentrated in the OO sector.
Perhaps we need to be forcing such people to take a lodger.
In reality we need a larger PRS in this country, not a smaller one, as we have one of the smallest availabilities of rental property in Western Europe.
If a tenant can afford to pay for their landlord's mortgage, they an afford to pay for their own. Rent should not be enough to cover a BTL mortgage in a healthy economy.
Young families with children are more likely to rent, they have more people living in the house. If they buy, then they're not going to kick their kids out of the home.
Old pensioners are more likely to owner occupy, they have fewer people living in the house as their children now live in homes of their own - and their kids and grandkids are more likely to rent than the grandparents are.
Only 25% of owner-occupied homes have dependent children in them. The rented sector is massively higher, because of demographics not because of ownership.
Rental prices haven't rocketed and they don't (that claim is a myth) - except in the deluded heads of thick story-hunting journos wanting to drive the outrage bus who only look at the advertised prices of the 1-2% (my estimate) of properties shown today on Zoopla or Rightmove or a sample from some other estate agent.
Look at the ONS index of a wider survey of rental prices, and the PRS rental increase for the current 12 months to April 2023 is under 5% - which is well short of inflation. Here are the numbers for the last several years.
AIUI, Mr Osborne admitted some time ago that his deliberate targeting of the PRS was a mistake.