Too early to tell. We need to see what happens to the various Russian defence chiefs (and their private armies). We are probably nearing the end of Putin but since he was long rumoured to be terminally ill, is this news?
The Estonian view is cautious. Clearly the cracks in the regime are out in the open, and change is coming, but the Ukrainians may need further help to achieve victory.
Belarus is now even more bound up in the fate of Russia, and consequently even more vulnerable.
After years of doubling down on lies and brutality, it is clear that Putinism is turning out of road, and equally paralysed about what to do next.
Or he could emerge much stronger internally as potential plotters have realised that the armed forces are not obviously disloyal to him and the one big active source of opposition has been forced out of the country.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
They're in a complete bind. They'll trot out the wage-price spiral excuse to justify bearing down on public sector pay, but the plain fact is that they're struggling to find politically acceptable cuts to fund extra spending in this area, borrowing is enormous and becoming ever more expensive, and so they're left with either digging their heels in and offering workers peanuts, or raising taxes on their core supporters to pay for more generous rises. There's no violin small enough.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Yes, that's actually an intelligent discussion and another illustration of the puzzling extent to which it's possible to have critical voices on Russian TV. That isn't a new phenomenon - we've seen off-message discussions highlighted repeatedly over the last year or two, from rational people like this to truly bonkers commentators. To some extent that's presumably allowing some letting off steam, but it also illustrates the fact that power isn't as centralised and monolithic as we tend to think.
Which is probably a good thing, as it gives the possibility of less imperialist figures coming to the fore - but obviously it gives space for ultra-nationalists nutters as well.
Football: at the risk of over-exciting everyone I've been running some numbers and may amend my guideline odds for next season. Cool, I know.
An interesting thing to emerge is that La Liga has (last season, anyway, we'll see if it's a blip and I over-correct) win results (home/draw/away) identical to the EPL but goal total markets almost identical to Serie A (100 goals lower, roughly).
Probably going to tentatively return to La Liga as I think (hard to be sure given lack of experience) my bad run there was due to misfortune. I did have four bets in a row fail by a single goal, although the minor shift in odds guidance might also be a reflection my numbers were slighty off-kilter, whereas the Serie A/Ligue 1 odds are only shifting by a small amounts, and the EPL's guideline odds are staying as is.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
Alternatively, they do understand - at least in an abstract fashion - but are also both very rich and insulated from any such trifling considerations, and therefore don't care.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
That is very true and the present spending is surprising in view of the COL crisis
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Apparently they are being moved into the regular Russian army
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Yes, very likely judging by our Trustwide Consultants WhatsApp, the question is whether it passes the turnout threshold. The independence of the payload is the big issue, and anaesthetists seem particularly militant.
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Some are becoming contrakti in the RF armed forces, some will melt away to whatever muddy, backward, shithole they came from, some will go the new PMCs; Convoy, Kadyrov's and that one that the head of the Russian Prison Service is starting. PMC Porridge.
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Yes, that's actually an intelligent discussion and another illustration of the puzzling extent to which it's possible to have critical voices on Russian TV. That isn't a new phenomenon - we've seen off-message discussions highlighted repeatedly over the last year or two, from rational people like this to truly bonkers commentators. To some extent that's presumably allowing some letting off steam, but it also illustrates the fact that power isn't as centralised and monolithic as we tend to think.
Which is probably a good thing, as it gives the possibility of less imperialist figures coming to the fore - but obviously it gives space for ultra-nationalists nutters as well.
I think that's a bit naïve. Putin wouldn't allow anyone broadcasting he didn't want to.
And that dialogue is very pro-war, as they always are.
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
I think everybody basically knows nothing at this point. The Wagner troops hadn't come directly from Ukraine, they were in camps in Russia, and I guess for now that's where they've gone back to.
Apparently the Kremlin spokesman said that the people who took part in the mutiny wouldn't be charged, while the others would sign contracts with the Ministry of Defence. But the Kremlin spokesman lies a lot, so who knows. And I think if you were in Wagner right now you'd be reluctant to sign a contract to go back to a war zone with somebody from the Ministry of Defence deciding how dangerous an assignment you'll be getting.
To the extent they are now being slightly critical of Putin, that probably reflects the current real-politik and not tolerance of the authorities toward freedom of speech.
The modus operandi there in the past has been you can say what you like, provided you are largely ignored, but if it becomes a problem, and then you will be ruthlessly held to account for it.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Indeed. I think goodwill towards LAB in general will evaporate very very very quickly within six months. LAB have no idea!
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
That is very true and the present spending is surprising in view of the COL crisis
Savers have already been penalised over the last decade of low interest rates. There has been little incentive to squirrel money away given the returns.
Higher interest rates don’t only take money out of the econ9my from borrowers but also fr9m savers.
We need a balance between spend and save. People saving for their retirement and latter years is a benefit as it reduces what the govt needs to pay out in terms of additional benefits.
It also makes sense to have six months salary saved in case of unemployment and savings for emergencies.
I've seen these open chats on Russian media before.
However, Putin has clearly been humiliated ; he presented a video describing the Wagner group as an enormous threat and traitors, and also appeared more flustered than at any time or video, in his career.
This makes reasserting authority a huge priority in any normal situation, but, as I mentioned yesterday, Peskov also said that "no new video from Putin " was planned, and like other official Russian sources, heaped all the praise on Lukashenko. I think his position is not too good.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Apparently they are being moved into the regular Russian army
So there is no longer a Wagner private army? Just a very rich man in Belarus nervously checking his windows?
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
It's strange how general tax funding is seen as 'not our money', whilst energy bill funding by the same people is seen as 'our money' in outlets such as the Telegraph. It's also not £170 each of course - that is an average.
I'd say it's really that the Govt stopping pandering to the industry.
I guess there is a conversation about whether energy bills or taxation are more progressive - but large energy bills trend to wealthier people in larger houses. Anyone who invests in improving their own house will pay less green levy.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
That is very true and the present spending is surprising in view of the COL crisis
Savers have already been penalised over the last decade of low interest rates. There has been little incentive to squirrel money away given the returns.
Higher interest rates don’t only take money out of the econ9my from borrowers but also fr9m savers.
We need a balance between spend and save. People saving for their retirement and latter years is a benefit as it reduces what the govt needs to pay out in terms of additional benefits.
It also makes sense to have six months salary saved in case of unemployment and savings for emergencies.
Saving is not all bad.
To be honest I'm struggling to think of a time where cash savings have beat inflation in the last 15 years regardless of interest rate. I think you'd have consistently lost money in real terms almost all of the time. And NSI premium bonds are almost always shit.
It's stocks and shares ISAs/pensions and assets where you can save to generate a real return, or betting of course.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
It’s stories like this, that make me think a Farage party could actually pick up seats in ‘red wall’ areas. Con and Lab must seem like two cheeks of the same arse, to those in private-sector working-class jobs.
About the only cat they can pull out of the bag now, is a serious reduction in the 20% rate of income tax, down to 15%. Even that might not be enough.
I've seen these open chats on Russian media before.
However, Putin has clearly been humiliated ; he presented a video describing the Wagner group as an enormous threat and traitors, and also appeared more flustered than at any time or video, in his career.
This makes reasserting authority a huge priority in any normal situation, but, as I mentioned yesterday, Peskov also said that "no new video from Putin " was planned, and like other official Russian sources, heaped all the praise on Lukashenko. I think his position is not too good.
Also turns out that the terrible punishment he threatened the traitors with was a dacha in Belarus for its leader, and an amnesty for all those who followed him. That’ll be noted.
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Apparently they are being moved into the regular Russian army
So there is no longer a Wagner private army? Just a very rich man in Belarus nervously checking his windows?
I mean, in theory it could go back to being a private military company renting out mercenaries to African dictators and they could keep some guys. I don't think anybody knows what the deal was or what the deal will end up being.
Also Wagner are allegedly still in control of a bunch of Russian air bases. Sounds sensible, you never know when you'll need a Russian air base.
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Apparently they are being moved into the regular Russian army
So there is no longer a Wagner private army? Just a very rich man in Belarus nervously checking his windows?
I mean, in theory it could go back to being a private military company renting out mercenaries to African dictators and they could keep some guys. I don't think anybody knows what the deal was or what the deal will end up being.
Also Wagner are allegedly still in control of a bunch of Russian air bases. Sounds sensible, you never know when you'll need a Russian air base.
Yes, that's actually an intelligent discussion and another illustration of the puzzling extent to which it's possible to have critical voices on Russian TV. That isn't a new phenomenon - we've seen off-message discussions highlighted repeatedly over the last year or two, from rational people like this to truly bonkers commentators. To some extent that's presumably allowing some letting off steam, but it also illustrates the fact that power isn't as centralised and monolithic as we tend to think.
Which is probably a good thing, as it gives the possibility of less imperialist figures coming to the fore - but obviously it gives space for ultra-nationalists nutters as well.
I think that's a bit naïve. Putin wouldn't allow anyone broadcasting he didn't want to.
And that dialogue is very pro-war, as they always are.
The main critisicm of Putin is not from the anti war side in Russia.
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Follow the money. If Prigozhin can keep the money flowing from Africa or Russia, he can probably keep his army going.
I imagine he will have a lot of personal security in Belarus.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Not to mention that people whose pay-rises are overruled will become less likely to vote Conservative.
I would expect the vast majority of public sector workers back Labour now anyway, Sunak and Hunt's main focus now will be to keep inflation down and cut cost of living. Then if they can cut some taxes pre election next year
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
I think everybody basically knows nothing at this point. The Wagner troops hadn't come directly from Ukraine, they were in camps in Russia, and I guess for now that's where they've gone back to.
Apparently the Kremlin spokesman said that the people who took part in the mutiny wouldn't be charged, while the others would sign contracts with the Ministry of Defence. But the Kremlin spokesman lies a lot, so who knows. And I think if you were in Wagner right now you'd be reluctant to sign a contract to go back to a war zone with somebody from the Ministry of Defence deciding how dangerous an assignment you'll be getting.
‘I think everybody basically knows nothing at this point.’
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
It’s stories like this, that make me think a Farage party could actually pick up seats in ‘red wall’ areas. Con and Lab must seem like two cheeks of the same arse, to those in private-sector working-class jobs.
About the only cat they can pull out of the bag now, is a serious reduction in the 20% rate of income tax, down to 15%. Even that might not be enough.
I think Jeremy might go for the 2% income tax cut in Spring 2024 budget. Just for the basic rate.
Increasing the personal allowance would be better though as it would be relatively more beneficial for those on lower incomes. Say put it up to £15,000 pa.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Not to mention that people whose pay-rises are overruled will become less likely to vote Conservative.
I would expect the vast majority of public sectorall workers back Labour now anyway, Sunak and Hunt's main focus now will be to keep inflation down and cut cost of living. Then if they can cut some taxes pre election next year
To be honest I'm struggling to think of a time where cash savings have beat inflation in the last 15 years regardless of interest rate. I think you'd have consistently lost money in real terms almost all of the time. And NSI premium bonds are almost always shit.
It's stocks and shares ISAs/pensions and assets where you can save to generate a real return, or betting of course.
The economic culture has been against saving for many years. The key messages are consume and borrow, the basis being you can buy whatever you like and if you can't afford it stick it on the plastic and pay it off when your salary comes in.
The quickest way to a depression would be if we all stopped consuming and started saving - that's pretty much what happened during the pandemic and as soon as lockdowns and restrictions ended out came the cash and off shot the economic indicators from PMI to (eventually) CPI and RPI.
What's needed is a balance which rewards and encourages saving (particularly for pension provision) but which doesn't stop the economy in its tracks.
The current problem which isn't being considered is the renewed and rapid growth of debt, both corporate and personal. It's as though having spent the cash piles accumulated during Covid, people and businesses haven't wanted to stop spending and consuming and have just carried on funding it all by borrowing (despite rising interest rates). That new debt bomb is developing nicely under the economy.
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Follow the money. If Prigozhin can keep the money flowing from Africa or Russia, he can probably keep his army going.
I imagine he will have a lot of personal security in Belarus.
Should add. These deals always come down to money in the end.
I could imagine a deal where Putin pays Lukashenko who then retains Prigozhin as his Praetorian Guard. Prigozhin is horrible but he has the most effective army in those parts.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
It’s stories like this, that make me think a Farage party could actually pick up seats in ‘red wall’ areas. Con and Lab must seem like two cheeks of the same arse, to those in private-sector working-class jobs.
About the only cat they can pull out of the bag now, is a serious reduction in the 20% rate of income tax, down to 15%. Even that might not be enough.
I think Jeremy might go for the 2% income tax cut in Spring 2024 budget. Just for the basic rate.
Increasing the personal allowance would be better though as it would be relatively more beneficial for those on lower incomes. Say put it up to £15,000 pa.
Cutting the basic rate of income tax is the pure 'politics over everything' play. So, yep, that's the one.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Indeed. I think goodwill towards LAB in general will evaporate very very very quickly within six months. LAB have no idea!
I keep trying to keep my pessimism in check and remind myself that we can't fully judge how Labour claims it is going to approach our desperate problems until we get an election manifesto, but I'd agree that the signs do not look encouraging. Reeves' platform, from what little we've heard so far (which seems to centre around an aversion to almost all further changes to rates of taxation, apart from a larger windfall tax on fossil fuel extraction and the abolition of tax breaks for private schools,) sounds suspiciously like continuity Toryism, plus a few quid scraped together to build some extra wind turbines.
They appear to have decided that the needs and wishes of core Conservative voters are much more important than those of core Labour voters, and will reap a well-deserved harvest of apathy and disillusionment if and when this becomes obvious. It's all very well saying that we're headed for a change election, but what happens when the voters realise that the principal change on offer is to who's going to be appearing on television to try to justify all this crap, whilst the rotten system is kept practically intact?
So have the Wagner troops all gone to Belarus? What are they going to do there? Or have they gone back to the front in Ukraine? Or are they out of the war entirely?
Apparently they are being moved into the regular Russian army
So there is no longer a Wagner private army?
They'll just rebrand. Like Blackwater or Consignia.
Sky Russia correspondent is speculating that Prigozhin may well be in line to succeed Lukashenko who is ill and that it is very bad news for Ukraine
Not sure this is sensible speculation but then who knows ?
He doesn't have a private army any more. Would the Belarusian army back him?
He's obviously in bad odour with Putin who has been trying to take over Belarus for years, and without whom Lukashenko would have been out at the last election.
He isn't Belarusian.
Belarus' military is too busy curbing unrest at home to attack Ukraine, and due to the geography of Ukraine's northern border it's not an ideal base anyway (Russia did use it for their attack on Kyiv, which may politely be called the greatest military disaster since the Carthaginian elephants trampled the wrong army at the battle of Zama).
If he is made president either Putin will shoot him or the Belarusians will.
So if that was the deal and he's accepted it either he's as stupid as Dominic Cummings or he was in imminent danger of being overwhelmed and shot anyway.
To be honest I'm struggling to think of a time where cash savings have beat inflation in the last 15 years regardless of interest rate. I think you'd have consistently lost money in real terms almost all of the time. And NSI premium bonds are almost always shit.
It's stocks and shares ISAs/pensions and assets where you can save to generate a real return, or betting of course.
The economic culture has been against saving for many years. The key messages are consume and borrow, the basis being you can buy whatever you like and if you can't afford it stick it on the plastic and pay it off when your salary comes in.
The quickest way to a depression would be if we all stopped consuming and started saving - that's pretty much what happened during the pandemic and as soon as lockdowns and restrictions ended out came the cash and off shot the economic indicators from PMI to (eventually) CPI and RPI.
What's needed is a balance which rewards and encourages saving (particularly for pension provision) but which doesn't stop the economy in its tracks.
The current problem which isn't being considered is the renewed and rapid growth of debt, both corporate and personal. It's as though having spent the cash piles accumulated during Covid, people and businesses haven't wanted to stop spending and consuming and have just carried on funding it all by borrowing (despite rising interest rates). That new debt bomb is developing nicely under the economy.
We do have rewards for pension savings. You can save free of tax, effectively the taxman tops your savings up by 20%, or more depending on your tax rate.
The downside being you tie the money up for many years and various govts change the rules and regulations around these funds.
The latest wheezes will be announced by Hunt this week.
Low interest rates will have discouraged saving on deposit which would help spur consumer spending.
It is debt and also the cost of debt which is spiralling and won’t come down anytime soon.
We are heading for a Rocky few years. I don’t have faith in any politicians to deal with it, it will simply be more of the same until we reach the end of the road.
Sky Russia correspondent is speculating that Prigozhin may well be in line to succeed Lukashenko who is ill and that it is very bad news for Ukraine
Not sure this is sensible speculation but then who knows ?
Everyone's coming out with their hot takes, the bulk of which will be disproved by the course of events. One wouldn't have thought that Lukashenko's lieutenants would take kindly to having a Russian leader imposed on them when he shuffles off, as opposed to one of them getting the chance to succeed, but what do I know?
In any case, I'm not sure that the identity of the individual in charge in Minsk is of much relevance to the predicament of Ukraine. The Belarusian military is far too feeble to open a new front and try to march on Kyiv, and there's no evidence to suggest that Russia has the resources to do so utilising the territory of Belarus as a jumping off point.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Not to mention that people whose pay-rises are overruled will become less likely to vote Conservative.
I would expect the vast majority of public sector workers back Labour now anyway, Sunak and Hunt's main focus now will be to keep inflation down and cut cost of living. Then if they can cut some taxes pre election next year
Labour's 1997 landslide came at least in part from the government making that same flawed, cynical calculation and systematically alienating its supporters amongst public sector professionals. It also has little direct connection to inflation since there is no direct link from pay rises to price rises like there would be in, say, a crisps factory. There might be a small effect by stimulating demand for some goods.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Indeed. I think goodwill towards LAB in general will evaporate very very very quickly within six months. LAB have no idea!
I keep trying to keep my pessimism in check and remind myself that we can't fully judge how Labour claims it is going to approach our desperate problems until we get an election manifesto, but I'd agree that the signs do not look encouraging. Reeves' platform, from what little we've heard so far (which seems to centre around an aversion to almost all further changes to rates of taxation, apart from a larger windfall tax on fossil fuel extraction and the abolition of tax breaks for private schools,) sounds suspiciously like continuity Toryism, plus a few quid scraped together to build some extra wind turbines.
They appear to have decided that the needs and wishes of core Conservative voters are much more important than those of core Labour voters, and will reap a well-deserved harvest of apathy and disillusionment if and when this becomes obvious. It's all very well saying that we're headed for a change election, but what happens when the voters realise that the principal change on offer is to who's going to be appearing on television to try to justify all this crap, whilst the rotten system is kept practically intact?
Nandy on Sky has just now said they would have to see the pay review bodies recommendations to assess if they were affordable prompting Trevor Philips to say
'So you are on the same page as the government'
He went on to ask her to outline one measure Labour would take to combat inflation and her response was to see banks paid savers a fair rate of interest !!!!!!
As I have said before you can change who is in no 10, but you cannot change the economics
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Not to mention that people whose pay-rises are overruled will become less likely to vote Conservative.
I would expect the vast majority of public sectorall workers back Labour now anyway, Sunak and Hunt's main focus now will be to keep inflation down and cut cost of living. Then if they can cut some taxes pre election next year
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
And capitalism and pay rises aren't delivering much for 90% of workers now, whereas assets and savings are delivering more for the average person
Belarus' military is too busy curbing unrest at home to attack Ukraine
Internal repression in Belarus is (mostly) the responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the OMON Robocops. But the Belarussian military do not have much to contribute to the SMO beyond a load of trucks with flat batteries and logistical/technical support for RF air operations via the base at Machulishchy.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Indeed. I think goodwill towards LAB in general will evaporate very very very quickly within six months. LAB have no idea!
I keep trying to keep my pessimism in check and remind myself that we can't fully judge how Labour claims it is going to approach our desperate problems until we get an election manifesto, but I'd agree that the signs do not look encouraging. Reeves' platform, from what little we've heard so far (which seems to centre around an aversion to almost all further changes to rates of taxation, apart from a larger windfall tax on fossil fuel extraction and the abolition of tax breaks for private schools,) sounds suspiciously like continuity Toryism, plus a few quid scraped together to build some extra wind turbines.
They appear to have decided that the needs and wishes of core Conservative voters are much more important than those of core Labour voters, and will reap a well-deserved harvest of apathy and disillusionment if and when this becomes obvious. It's all very well saying that we're headed for a change election, but what happens when the voters realise that the principal change on offer is to who's going to be appearing on television to try to justify all this crap, whilst the rotten system is kept practically intact?
I think, and hope, that you are being unduly pessimistic. Labour's sole, over-riding aim right now is to win the election. Just like Blair and Brown in 1997, they think the biggest danger to doing so is being portrayed as irresponsible with the economy. (The second biggest perceived danger is overturning Brexit - hence the "make Brexit work" slogan). So, as in 1997, Reeves is promising fiscal rectitude. The polls suggest it is working at the moment, with Labour leading the Tories on "the economy". But, once elected, I would expect Starmer to pivot towards a more redistributive tax and spend policy, including ensuring the rich, both in income and wealth, pay a higher share for the common good.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Indeed. I think goodwill towards LAB in general will evaporate very very very quickly within six months. LAB have no idea!
I keep trying to keep my pessimism in check and remind myself that we can't fully judge how Labour claims it is going to approach our desperate problems until we get an election manifesto, but I'd agree that the signs do not look encouraging. Reeves' platform, from what little we've heard so far (which seems to centre around an aversion to almost all further changes to rates of taxation, apart from a larger windfall tax on fossil fuel extraction and the abolition of tax breaks for private schools,) sounds suspiciously like continuity Toryism, plus a few quid scraped together to build some extra wind turbines.
They appear to have decided that the needs and wishes of core Conservative voters are much more important than those of core Labour voters, and will reap a well-deserved harvest of apathy and disillusionment if and when this becomes obvious. It's all very well saying that we're headed for a change election, but what happens when the voters realise that the principal change on offer is to who's going to be appearing on television to try to justify all this crap, whilst the rotten system is kept practically intact?
Nandy on Sky has just now said they would have to see the pay review bodies recommendations to assess if they were affordable prompting Trevor Philips to say
'So you are on the same page as the government'
He went on to ask her to outline one measure Labour would take to combat inflation and her response was to see banks paid savers a fair rate of interest !!!!!!
As I have said before you can change who is in no 10, but you cannot change the economics
So neither side are prepared to talk about the actual scope of government activity, merely the balance of pay rises and inflationary pressure.
As @MaxPB pointed out yesterday, there’s a million more civil servants today than in 2016. Pay rises need to be linked to productivity, and there needs to be an awful lot of replacement of labour with capital within the public sector.
Crossing the Moscow ring road and legging it over the Kremlin wall ain't so easy as some dimwitted commentators supposed. One British news organ, I can't remember which, maybe BBC or Daily Telegraph, talked about the Prigozhin force arriving in Moscow around midnight yesterday. Yeah right.
Kadyrov himself has threatened before to "go to Moscow" to have strong words with the central command, although not in a mutinous sense.
Note that as I understand it he only condemned the mutiny after it was over. It's possible he was hedging his bets, but I doubt it. More likely he kept himself at Putin's disposal and spoke only when he was told to speak.
Will Prigozhin take a substantial number of troops or quantity of weapons with him to Belarus? I'm guessing he won't and that he's out of the Russian-Ukraine war now. Where this leaves Wagner in all the other places where it has a presence (including Syria and Africa) is another question.
There are probably quite a few people in Russia who think both sides of this were directed by the same office in the FSB.
I doubt they're right. But unity of FSB command is an extremely important factor. When it cracks, Russia cracks. And it's not cracking.
If you look deep behind the language of Russian "statehood" and protecting it from being undermined, challenged, eroded, destroyed, forced to surrender, guess which organisation you can see? Yes that's right, the FSB, which has existed under different names for a very long time.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
It’s stories like this, that make me think a Farage party could actually pick up seats in ‘red wall’ areas. Con and Lab must seem like two cheeks of the same arse, to those in private-sector working-class jobs.
About the only cat they can pull out of the bag now, is a serious reduction in the 20% rate of income tax, down to 15%. Even that might not be enough.
Farage's party is much more likely to be a spoiler rather than win anywhere. Also they are likely to have useless candidates.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
It’s stories like this, that make me think a Farage party could actually pick up seats in ‘red wall’ areas. Con and Lab must seem like two cheeks of the same arse, to those in private-sector working-class jobs.
About the only cat they can pull out of the bag now, is a serious reduction in the 20% rate of income tax, down to 15%. Even that might not be enough.
Farage's party is much more likely to be a spoiler rather than win anywhere. Also they are likely to have useless candidates.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
And capitalism and pay rises aren't delivering much for 90% of workers now, whereas assets and savings are delivering more for the average person
Many fewer people have either assets or savings today, then has been the case in the recent past.
That a diminishing number of people enjoy such benefits, is a huge problem for the country and its leaders.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Not to mention that people whose pay-rises are overruled will become less likely to vote Conservative.
I would expect the vast majority of public sectorall workers back Labour now anyway, Sunak and Hunt's main focus now will be to keep inflation down and cut cost of living. Then if they can cut some taxes pre election next year
Conservatives still ahead with over 65s then, unlike 1997 when Blair led with pensioners
Of course. Because that’s the only group the Tories have left.
If your putting your faith in that basket of voters - the future pensioner won’t have the kind of the wealth that some current pensioners do. Us poor millennials will be paying off mortgages into our 80s
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
I can't think of a more deserving group to get paid well. Years of hard studying and hard work, having to deal with all kinds of depressing stuff, but their work is incredibly valuable to the individual and society. If they aren't paid well, who should be?
They are well paid though already. obviously the shit bankers/finance geezers are well overpaid but compared to your average person , Doctors are at top of the tree already. Far better to pay those at the bottom who are being shat on. There are NO poor doctor's.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
It’s stories like this, that make me think a Farage party could actually pick up seats in ‘red wall’ areas. Con and Lab must seem like two cheeks of the same arse, to those in private-sector working-class jobs.
About the only cat they can pull out of the bag now, is a serious reduction in the 20% rate of income tax, down to 15%. Even that might not be enough.
Farage's party is much more likely to be a spoiler rather than win anywhere. Also they are likely to have useless candidates.
I wonder if we’re beginning to forget about the ‘ordinary’ Wagner soldier? Must have a chain of command of some sort. How long before the NCO’s and other ranks get fed up. Especially if if there’s an interruption in pay? What will they do? Sit down where they are and threaten their commanders? Or head off to other places where soldiers are paid in gold?
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
I can't think of a more deserving group to get paid well. Years of hard studying and hard work, having to deal with all kinds of depressing stuff, but their work is incredibly valuable to the individual and society. If they aren't paid well, who should be?
Depressing? Really? You think they give a damn? Being on pure-grade smack - sorry, "diamorphine" - helps a lot of them, but mostly because they're boring and haven't got much of a life, not because they'd otherwise be depressed. You are so naive, @Farooq.
"Years of hard studying" - my a*sehole! Why do they go around claiming to be "doctors" when they haven't got doctorates in sheeyit? "Doctor" of course isn't a protected term, but who else acts that way? A few dentists, a very few vets, and that's it. But all medics.
You might also look at how the concept of "layperson" works for the members of this particular and very well financially insured priesthood.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
And capitalism and pay rises aren't delivering much for 90% of workers now, whereas assets and savings are delivering more for the average person
Many fewer people have either assets or savings today, then has been the case in the recent past.
That a diminishing number of people enjoy such benefits, is a huge problem for the country and its leaders.
You cannot spend it and have savings. In the past people did without things to save , nowadays they want it all on a plate , be able to spend like drunk men yet have huge savings , cheap houses etc.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
And capitalism and pay rises aren't delivering much for 90% of workers now, whereas assets and savings are delivering more for the average person
Many fewer people have either assets or savings today, then has been the case in the recent past.
That a diminishing number of people enjoy such benefits, is a huge problem for the country and its leaders.
Even in the 1960s most of the population rented. Now 65% of the population own a property with or without a mortgage and the value of those homes they own is still high even if their wages are rising on average significantly below inflation
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Not to mention that people whose pay-rises are overruled will become less likely to vote Conservative.
I would expect the vast majority of public sectorall workers back Labour now anyway, Sunak and Hunt's main focus now will be to keep inflation down and cut cost of living. Then if they can cut some taxes pre election next year
Conservatives still ahead with over 65s then, unlike 1997 when Blair led with pensioners
Seriously?
You and I both know the Conservatives were much more competitive with younger voters in 1997 than they are now. In any case, the Opinium 40-27 needs two caveats - first, Reform polls 16% among the same age group and indeed half the Reform support in last night's Opinium comes from over 65s.
Second, 40-27 would indeed still be a Conservative lead but compared to the 64-17 lead held by the Conservatives in 2019 would represent a 17% swing in that critical age group from Conservative to Labour and I'll willingly concede IF Opinium is accurate AND you add all the Reform votes to the Conservatives (two buckets of salt, please) the swing would be a more modest 9%.
OTOH, Techne (fieldwork at the same time) has Labour leading the over 65s by 40-38 - I've not seen the Omnisis data tables.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Not to mention that people whose pay-rises are overruled will become less likely to vote Conservative.
I would expect the vast majority of public sectorall workers back Labour now anyway, Sunak and Hunt's main focus now will be to keep inflation down and cut cost of living. Then if they can cut some taxes pre election next year
Conservatives still ahead with over 65s then, unlike 1997 when Blair led with pensioners
Surely the answer is to either raise the minimum voting age to 65 or streamline voter photo ID requirements down to an over 65 bus pass. I'd favour the latter.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
I can't think of a more deserving group to get paid well. Years of hard studying and hard work, having to deal with all kinds of depressing stuff, but their work is incredibly valuable to the individual and society. If they aren't paid well, who should be?
They are well paid though already. obviously the shit bankers/finance geezers are well overpaid but compared to your average person , Doctors are at top of the tree already. Far better to pay those at the bottom who are being shat on. There are NO poor doctor's.
There certainly are poor doctors. If you're starting off on £30k and with £60k debts, are you rich?
That old chestnut, they start for a very very short spell on £30K basic with all sorts of uplifts for the hours worked , unsocial , different departments etc. I doubt there are any actually on £30K ever and milloins would love to be on 30K basic with great pensions , job for life and guaranteed long list of adders.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
I can't think of a more deserving group to get paid well. Years of hard studying and hard work, having to deal with all kinds of depressing stuff, but their work is incredibly valuable to the individual and society. If they aren't paid well, who should be?
They are well paid though already. obviously the shit bankers/finance geezers are well overpaid but compared to your average person , Doctors are at top of the tree already. Far better to pay those at the bottom who are being shat on. There are NO poor doctor's.
There certainly are poor doctors. If you're starting off on £30k and with £60k debts, are you rich?
That old chestnut, they start for a very very short spell on £30K basic with all sorts of uplifts for the hours worked , unsocial , different departments etc. I doubt there are any actually on £30K ever and milloins would love to be on 30K basic with great pensions , job for life and guaranteed long list of adders.
Also no need to pay any debt till you are on big money and then it is peanuts. Biggets complaint seems to be maxing out their 7 figure pension funds.
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
I can't think of a more deserving group to get paid well. Years of hard studying and hard work, having to deal with all kinds of depressing stuff, but their work is incredibly valuable to the individual and society. If they aren't paid well, who should be?
They are well paid though already. obviously the shit bankers/finance geezers are well overpaid but compared to your average person , Doctors are at top of the tree already. Far better to pay those at the bottom who are being shat on. There are NO poor doctor's.
There certainly are poor doctors. If you're starting off on £30k and with £60k debts, are you rich?
You are average, if by the end of your career you are a surgeon or partner in a gp practice then you will very likely be rich
< So neither side are prepared to talk about the actual scope of government activity, merely the balance of pay rises and inflationary pressure.
As @MaxPB pointed out yesterday, there’s a million more civil servants today than in 2016. Pay rises need to be linked to productivity, and there needs to be an awful lot of replacement of labour with capital within the public sector.
It depends what you mean by "civil servants". There are for example a million fewer workers in local Government now than in 2010 and if you want to know what happened to austerity, that's your answer.
Throwing useless statistics like "a million more civil servants" without a scintilla of context isn't helpful. One could ask why the Conservatives (apparently once a party which believed in a smaller state) have allowed the numbers to rise so dramatically.
There are so many questions about the Conservatives' failures after 13 years of leading the Government, it really is hard to know where to start. Probably the best place is "And why should we allow you failures to have another five years of inertia, incompetence and indolence?".
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
I can't think of a more deserving group to get paid well. Years of hard studying and hard work, having to deal with all kinds of depressing stuff, but their work is incredibly valuable to the individual and society. If they aren't paid well, who should be?
Depressing? Really? You think they give a damn? Being on pure-grade smack - sorry, "diamorphine" - helps a lot of them, but mostly because they're boring and haven't got much of a life, not because they'd otherwise be depressed. You are so naive, @Farooq.
I didn't understand any of that apart from the last sentence, so judging only on that, you're absolutely right. But I do have to ask, just for my curiosity... what in God's own fuck are you wittering on about?
I'm not sure why it wasn't clear, but no problem, I will clarify further. I mean medics rarely get depressed about the work they do, because generally speaking they don't care about their patients. All they care about is money, hobnobbing with each other, and whatever passes for exclusive luxury consumption. I observed that many take a fair amount of heroin (also called "smack" by some in the underclass who take the same drug, and called "diamorphine" in a medical context) for recreational purposes - not to deal with depression, but simply because many of them haven't got the personalities to keep up many different interests and keep on learning new things which to my mind is what makes for a happy life.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
It’s stories like this, that make me think a Farage party could actually pick up seats in ‘red wall’ areas. Con and Lab must seem like two cheeks of the same arse, to those in private-sector working-class jobs.
About the only cat they can pull out of the bag now, is a serious reduction in the 20% rate of income tax, down to 15%. Even that might not be enough.
Farage's party is much more likely to be a spoiler rather than win anywhere. Also they are likely to have useless candidates.
Maybe even Reckless ones.
Talking of spoilers, a Green vote of 3-5% would stop Labour or Liberal Democrats from winning in a number of seats. Spoken as someone who lost by 35 votes in the recent local elections to the Conservatives partially thanks to a Green who didn't campaign taking 58 votes!
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
I can't think of a more deserving group to get paid well. Years of hard studying and hard work, having to deal with all kinds of depressing stuff, but their work is incredibly valuable to the individual and society. If they aren't paid well, who should be?
Depressing? Really? You think they give a damn? Being on pure-grade smack - sorry, "diamorphine" - helps a lot of them, but mostly because they're boring and haven't got much of a life, not because they'd otherwise be depressed. You are so naive, @Farooq.
I didn't understand any of that apart from the last sentence, so judging only on that, you're absolutely right. But I do have to ask, just for my curiosity... what in God's own fuck are you wittering on about?
I'm not sure why it wasn't clear, but no problem, I will clarify further. I mean medics rarely get depressed about the work they do, because generally speaking they don't care about their patients. All they care about is money, hobnobbing with each other, and whatever passes for exclusive luxury consumption. I observed that many take a fair amount of heroin (also called "smack" by some in the underclass who take the same drug, and called "diamorphine" in a medical context) for recreational purposes - not to deal with depression, but simply because many of them haven't got the personalities to keep up many different interests and keep on learning new things which to my mind is what makes for a happy life.
I don't understand how you learned all these new things about doctors. Unless you are one.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
And capitalism and pay rises aren't delivering much for 90% of workers now, whereas assets and savings are delivering more for the average person
Capitalism is delivering for workers. We're caught in a cycle of inflation and bad policy the now, but capitalism is still good. What we're doing as a country now isn't the only way to do capitalism. We just need to adjust course, not abandon ship.
Exclude government completely and just leave the economy to the market and unless you are an investment banker, FTSE 100 company ceo or director, tech executive or Premier League footballer capitalism isn't doing a great deal for you now. For most workers their pay is rising well below inflation. At least if they own a property that still likely has a high value even if falling a bit and their savings will be boosted by rising interest rates
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Yes, restoring the medical pay board independence is the key demand for Consultants in the current strike ballot. Results out Tuesday, I think, first 48 hour strike on 20th July pencilled in.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Do you think they will vote to strike ? They won a key concession after the consultative ballot. Namely the pensions lifetime allowance being raised with the annual amount you can put in one increased to 60K.
Doctors are getting too greedy by far. They are among highest paid in teh country and blackmail whilst people die , live in agony is not pleasant.
I can't think of a more deserving group to get paid well. Years of hard studying and hard work, having to deal with all kinds of depressing stuff, but their work is incredibly valuable to the individual and society. If they aren't paid well, who should be?
They are well paid though already. obviously the shit bankers/finance geezers are well overpaid but compared to your average person , Doctors are at top of the tree already. Far better to pay those at the bottom who are being shat on. There are NO poor doctor's.
There certainly are poor doctors. If you're starting off on £30k and with £60k debts, are you rich?
You are average, if by the end of your career you are a surgeon or partner in a gp practice then you will very likely be rich
£30k is about median salary. The huge debt you start off with needs to be taken into account if you're judging whether there in fact "NO poor doctors".
Yes, eventually you won't be poor any more. That's a good thing. But most doctors will start their working lives very poor indeed. That's just a fact. Not one I chose to raise, but I couldn't let malcolm's comment slide because it was untrue.
It was not untrue, as I said £30K is the very basic which no-one will earn , they get shift allowances, unsocial hours , overtime , speciality payments etc etc so none of ethm ever earn £30K. There are no poor doctor's, even at the very start they are above median wage and soon miles above it with double , treble or even more.
The front pages after a dramatic day – politicalbetting.com
Comments
That's the number that Putin allegedly paid.
The mean Labour lead from the last six national opinion polls is exactly 20%
The mean Conservative vote share is 26%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Belarus is now even more bound up in the fate of Russia, and consequently even more vulnerable.
After years of doubling down on lies and brutality, it is clear that Putinism is turning out of road, and equally paralysed about what to do next.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
Or he could emerge much stronger internally as potential plotters have realised that the armed forces are not obviously disloyal to him and the one big active source of opposition has been forced out of the country.
Time will of course tell.
I don't get a vote as not in the BMA.
Cash, or bank transfer?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/24/levy-net-zero-green-tory-rishi-sunak-this-week-170-pounds/
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
There seems to be quite a bit of challenging, or demotion of, Putin on Russian TV and media.
Here some more questioning of his authority.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1672857740920668160
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Which is probably a good thing, as it gives the possibility of less imperialist figures coming to the fore - but obviously it gives space for ultra-nationalists nutters as well.
An interesting thing to emerge is that La Liga has (last season, anyway, we'll see if it's a blip and I over-correct) win results (home/draw/away) identical to the EPL but goal total markets almost identical to Serie A (100 goals lower, roughly).
Probably going to tentatively return to La Liga as I think (hard to be sure given lack of experience) my bad run there was due to misfortune. I did have four bets in a row fail by a single goal, although the minor shift in odds guidance might also be a reflection my numbers were slighty off-kilter, whereas the Serie A/Ligue 1 odds are only shifting by a small amounts, and the EPL's guideline odds are staying as is.
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
Not sure how wise this is
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
And that dialogue is very pro-war, as they always are.
Apparently the Kremlin spokesman said that the people who took part in the mutiny wouldn't be charged, while the others would sign contracts with the Ministry of Defence. But the Kremlin spokesman lies a lot, so who knows. And I think if you were in Wagner right now you'd be reluctant to sign a contract to go back to a war zone with somebody from the Ministry of Defence deciding how dangerous an assignment you'll be getting.
The modus operandi there in the past has been you can say what you like, provided you are largely ignored, but if it becomes a problem, and then you will be ruthlessly held to account for it.
Putin: All mouth and no trousers
Higher interest rates don’t only take money out of the econ9my from borrowers but also fr9m savers.
We need a balance between spend and save. People saving for their retirement and latter years is a benefit as it reduces what the govt needs to pay out in terms of additional benefits.
It also makes sense to have six months salary saved in case of unemployment and savings for emergencies.
Saving is not all bad.
I've seen these open chats on Russian media before.
However, Putin has clearly been humiliated ; he presented a video describing the Wagner group as an enormous threat and traitors, and also appeared more flustered than at any time or video, in his career.
This makes reasserting authority a huge priority in any normal situation, but, as I mentioned yesterday, Peskov also said that "no new video from Putin " was planned, and like other official Russian sources, heaped all the praise on Lukashenko. I think his position is not too good.
June 2023: the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies are simply unaffordable.
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
I'd say it's really that the Govt stopping pandering to the industry.
I guess there is a conversation about whether energy bills or taxation are more progressive - but large energy bills trend to wealthier people in larger houses. Anyone who invests in improving their own house will pay less green levy.
It's stocks and shares ISAs/pensions and assets where you can save to generate a real return, or betting of course.
They should honour the independent pay reviews recommendations.
About the only cat they can pull out of the bag now, is a serious reduction in the 20% rate of income tax, down to 15%. Even that might not be enough.
Also Wagner are allegedly still in control of a bunch of Russian air bases. Sounds sensible, you never know when you'll need a Russian air base.
I imagine he will have a lot of personal security in Belarus.
Words to live by, day in, day out.
Increasing the personal allowance would be better though as it would be relatively more beneficial for those on lower incomes. Say put it up to £15,000 pa.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
Age splits from last night's Opinium:
18-34 C13 L65
35-49 C19 L50
50-64 C27 L41
65+ C40 L27
The quickest way to a depression would be if we all stopped consuming and started saving - that's pretty much what happened during the pandemic and as soon as lockdowns and restrictions ended out came the cash and off shot the economic indicators from PMI to (eventually) CPI and RPI.
What's needed is a balance which rewards and encourages saving (particularly for pension provision) but which doesn't stop the economy in its tracks.
The current problem which isn't being considered is the renewed and rapid growth of debt, both corporate and personal. It's as though having spent the cash piles accumulated during Covid, people and businesses haven't wanted to stop spending and consuming and have just carried on funding it all by borrowing (despite rising interest rates). That new debt bomb is developing nicely under the economy.
I could imagine a deal where Putin pays Lukashenko who then retains Prigozhin as his Praetorian Guard. Prigozhin is horrible but he has the most effective army in those parts.
Not sure this is sensible speculation but then who knows ?
They appear to have decided that the needs and wishes of core Conservative voters are much more important than those of core Labour voters, and will reap a well-deserved harvest of apathy and disillusionment if and when this becomes obvious. It's all very well saying that we're headed for a change election, but what happens when the voters realise that the principal change on offer is to who's going to be appearing on television to try to justify all this crap, whilst the rotten system is kept practically intact?
He's obviously in bad odour with Putin who has been trying to take over Belarus for years, and without whom Lukashenko would have been out at the last election.
He isn't Belarusian.
Belarus' military is too busy curbing unrest at home to attack Ukraine, and due to the geography of Ukraine's northern border it's not an ideal base anyway (Russia did use it for their attack on Kyiv, which may politely be called the greatest military disaster since the Carthaginian elephants trampled the wrong army at the battle of Zama).
If he is made president either Putin will shoot him or the Belarusians will.
So if that was the deal and he's accepted it either he's as stupid as Dominic Cummings or he was in imminent danger of being overwhelmed and shot anyway.
The downside being you tie the money up for many years and various govts change the rules and regulations around these funds.
The latest wheezes will be announced by Hunt this week.
Low interest rates will have discouraged saving on deposit which would help spur consumer spending.
It is debt and also the cost of debt which is spiralling and won’t come down anytime soon.
We are heading for a Rocky few years. I don’t have faith in any politicians to deal with it, it will simply be more of the same until we reach the end of the road.
In any case, I'm not sure that the identity of the individual in charge in Minsk is of much relevance to the predicament of Ukraine. The Belarusian military is far too feeble to open a new front and try to march on Kyiv, and there's no evidence to suggest that Russia has the resources to do so utilising the territory of Belarus as a jumping off point.
'So you are on the same page as the government'
He went on to ask her to outline one measure Labour would take to combat inflation and her response was to see banks paid savers a fair rate of interest !!!!!!
As I have said before you can change who is in no 10, but you cannot change the economics
As @MaxPB pointed out yesterday, there’s a million more civil servants today than in 2016. Pay rises need to be linked to productivity, and there needs to be an awful lot of replacement of labour with capital within the public sector.
https://tass.com/russia/1637677
Crossing the Moscow ring road and legging it over the Kremlin wall ain't so easy as some dimwitted commentators supposed. One British news organ, I can't remember which, maybe BBC or Daily Telegraph, talked about the Prigozhin force arriving in Moscow around midnight yesterday. Yeah right.
Kadyrov himself has threatened before to "go to Moscow" to have strong words with the central command, although not in a mutinous sense.
Note that as I understand it he only condemned the mutiny after it was over. It's possible he was hedging his bets, but I doubt it. More likely he kept himself at Putin's disposal and spoke only when he was told to speak.
Will Prigozhin take a substantial number of troops or quantity of weapons with him to Belarus? I'm guessing he won't and that he's out of the Russian-Ukraine war now. Where this leaves Wagner in all the other places where it has a presence (including Syria and Africa) is another question.
There are probably quite a few people in Russia who think both sides of this were directed by the same office in the FSB.
I doubt they're right. But unity of FSB command is an extremely important factor. When it cracks, Russia cracks. And it's not cracking.
If you look deep behind the language of Russian "statehood" and protecting it from being undermined, challenged, eroded, destroyed, forced to surrender, guess which organisation you can see? Yes that's right, the FSB, which has existed under different names for a very long time.
Also they are likely to have useless candidates.
That a diminishing number of people enjoy such benefits, is a huge problem for the country and its leaders.
If your putting your faith in that basket of voters - the future pensioner won’t have the kind of the wealth that some current pensioners do. Us poor millennials will be paying off mortgages into our 80s
1. No great Army or National Guard effort to stop Wagner. I expect Putin is taking careful note of who did or did not act.
2. Not much sign of support for Prigozhin. Tied to above, support for Putin may be weak but that doesn't mean just anyone can take over.
3. Lukashenko acting as intermediary. Is he one of the few Putin can trust as Lukashenko's position is so dependent on Putin's own?
One thing is clear though, Putin is weaker than ever.
I wonder if we’re beginning to forget about the ‘ordinary’ Wagner soldier? Must have a chain of command of some sort. How long before the NCO’s and other ranks get fed up. Especially if if there’s an interruption in pay?
What will they do? Sit down where they are and threaten their commanders? Or head off to other places where soldiers are paid in gold?
"Years of hard studying" - my a*sehole! Why do they go around claiming to be "doctors" when they haven't got doctorates in sheeyit? "Doctor" of course isn't a protected term, but who else acts that way? A few dentists, a very few vets, and that's it. But all medics.
You might also look at how the concept of "layperson" works for the members of this particular and very well financially insured priesthood.
You and I both know the Conservatives were much more competitive with younger voters in 1997 than they are now. In any case, the Opinium 40-27 needs two caveats - first, Reform polls 16% among the same age group and indeed half the Reform support in last night's Opinium comes from over 65s.
Second, 40-27 would indeed still be a Conservative lead but compared to the 64-17 lead held by the Conservatives in 2019 would represent a 17% swing in that critical age group from Conservative to Labour and I'll willingly concede IF Opinium is accurate AND you add all the Reform votes to the Conservatives (two buckets of salt, please) the swing would be a more modest 9%.
OTOH, Techne (fieldwork at the same time) has Labour leading the over 65s by 40-38 - I've not seen the Omnisis data tables.
Throwing useless statistics like "a million more civil servants" without a scintilla of context isn't helpful. One could ask why the Conservatives (apparently once a party which believed in a smaller state) have allowed the numbers to rise so dramatically.
There are so many questions about the Conservatives' failures after 13 years of leading the Government, it really is hard to know where to start. Probably the best place is "And why should we allow you failures to have another five years of inertia, incompetence and indolence?".
There are no poor doctor's, even at the very start they are above median wage and soon miles above it with double , treble or even more.