"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Surviving being in a car crash which kills your Mother and sister at the age of 2? You don't have to be a great advocate of attachment theory or survivor guilt to see how that might not help. Just an idea.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
Re: lawyers and clients, once worked for local deputy prosecutor who was running to be a judge.
He'd been a tough, generally successful prosecutor versus range of alleged/convicted malefactors. Including cases of domestic violence.
This record, backed up by wide variety of impressive testimonials & endorsements, proved to be highly persuasive with voters across the political spectrum, from wack to woke and back.
Criminal barristers in England & Wales have to work both sides of the fence so they can all be accused of being both tough and soft on crime.
How about the guy I posted about earlier, namely Edmund James, QC MP (Liberal) described by The Spectator as (according to wiki) a leader in all actions for seduction, breach of promise of marriage, assault, and false imprisonment, and in all cases that involved the reputation of an actress or a horse.
But where those civil, not criminal cases?
Note that unfortunately Edmund James was shortly both ex-QC (first ever disbarred) and ex-MP. However, believe that he might have won MY vote, based on a case where he was counsel for the defense for alleged murderer - and got him off on a technicality.
Anderson, a slave in Missouri, in 1660 escaped, stabbed and killed a man trying to recapture him, eluded other slave-catchers, and crossed the Detroit River into Canada West (Ontario). Request for extradition ultimately (also timely) rejected in 1861 due to faulty wording of warrant.
Most significant, albeit unexpected, result of James's advocacy in Anderson's case, was passage of Habeas Corpus Act 1862 by UK parliament denying British courts the right to issue writs of habeas corpus for British colonies or dominions with their own competent courts - a key step on the road from Empire to Commonwealth.
You can get a reputation for one or the other, Starmer was appointed DPP for a reason, but as a junior (ie any barrister not a QC/KC) you get what’s given to you at the independent bar. Traditionally barristers are all self-employed and you might get your instructions from either the Crown or the Defence. You can’t afford to be picky.
According to Wiki Edwin (tsk!) James QC’s famous cases included -
-The successful prosecution of poisoner William Palmer in 1856.
-The successful defence of Simon Bernard, who was tried in 1858 for complicity with Felice Orsini in his plot to assassinate Napoleon III of France.
- The Canadian appeal case of the fugitive slave John Anderson.
Same as with most professions, aside from the top 10% or so . . . and even for them more than you'd think.
At the English bar they call it the "cab rank rule". Even a criminal defence and human rights barrister as prestigious as Michael Mansfield once prosecuted alleged shoplifters. I doubt he's done much of that for quite some time, though.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
By the standards of US politics it is. Many politicians of less standing than an ex-VP would be expecting multiple “jobs” involving 3 days work a year, paying 6 or 7 figures. And stock options at pennies on the dollar.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
American politicians do, in general, seem to be very comfortable. The american public less concerned about them being out of touch and more praising of success perhaps? A consequence of the stupefying amounts of dosh required run and campaign in elections, and thus be able to rake in donations?
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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
While much of this is true, it is also the case that other countries have had similar situations to us, and have managed to avoid excessively expensive housing or stagnant business investment.
They therefore cannot be the whole story.
It's almost as if our planning system might be different to theirs.
The largest cost in household budgets is Housing. Not food, not gas, not electricity or anything else it is housing.
A very large proportion of the cost of housing is the cost of land.
And the cost of land with planning permission is inflated over land without.
Resolve one and others follow.
Indeed. Fundamentally, the cost of accommodation is a total rip-off - and it's even worse for renters than mortgage payers. Myself, if I was a renter - even living as I do in a modest one-bed flat - rather than owning outright then I'd be paying about as much for housing as all my other basic bills put together, including a healthy food budget as well as energy, TV/broadband and water.
This is why there's been such a mass pile-in into the BTL landlord business by small investors. It was money for old rope for anybody who could get hold of a BTL mortgage on an interest-only basis, and it's still money for old rope for any landlord who owns the rental outright or has a decent equity share. Just set up a little flat, install a renter and improve your own standard of living immensely by extracting a large chunk of their earned income for yourself. It's actually quite surprising that more people haven't done it when you think about it.
Tax rates on rents are high, compared to the untaxed status of enjoying the occupancy of a house you own yourself. Otherwise the world would indeed look like you suggest, and other countries like Switzerland look a lot more like the mass rental scenario.
Tax rates on rents are absurdly low, lower than tax rates on earned income. No NI on income from rents.
Not true, actually. I have a little field inherited from an ancestor and kept for sentimental/environmental reasons, and I get £80 pa for it from the farmer. But I have to pay NI on that. Class 2 or 3. Apparently it counts as a business.
Why doesn’t he just fill your freezer once a year like everyone else in that situation?
Doesn't produce the right sort of stuff ...
If it's bigger than a tenth of an acre it should be asking 80 per week or per month I would have thought.
A very small field. It did get valued when I inherited it, and that is a pretty fair return.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
By the standards of US politics it is. Many politicians of less standing than an ex-VP would be expecting multiple “jobs” involving 3 days work a year, paying 6 or 7 figures. And stock options at pennies on the dollar.
Am aware of all that. There's just the occasional (possibly inadvertently careless) phrasing on PB which opens a window onto a wholly different world.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
By the standards of US politics it is. Many politicians of less standing than an ex-VP would be expecting multiple “jobs” involving 3 days work a year, paying 6 or 7 figures. And stock options at pennies on the dollar.
A man who's been a Senator for - say - two terms, and who is fairly clubbable, can usually walk into a variety of consulting, lobbying and board memberships paying $1m/year. A former VP could easily earn 10x that.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Just so no-one thinks it's only Dems who manage this, Dick Cheney was a regular on the investment bank conference circuit, and I'm sure he was also picking up hundreds of thousands of dollars per appearance.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with ADHD to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Just so no-one thinks it's only Dems who manage this, Dick Cheney was a regular on the investment bank conference circuit, and I'm sure he was also picking up hundreds of thousands of dollars per appearance.
I used to know a guy who did something similar - but rather than talks it was 'certifying' IBM mainframe configurations. His villa overlooking the Aegean was lovely.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with it to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
Just remember, it's the public sector that is wasteful.
(One of the things that has happened since the rise of academies and networks is the creep of some of these values and behaviours into schools- but at a trivial level compared with this.)
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with ADHD to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with ADHD to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
This was a FTSE 250 Financial Services firm that would, once a year, hold a big event for its key employees, partners, etc. They'd have the CEO give a big gee up speech; a couple of famous people would come and give their views, etc. And then everyone would socialise, etc.
It probably cost them £1m to host. Which is a lot of money. But it was also an effective marketing tool. You might think Al Gore is a bit of a bore, but for Company X's partners to say "I was with Al Gore last week and he said...", that was invaluable. It was all part of the bullshit that is the financial advisory business.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with it to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
I've spent more than 10hrs this month tying to get a £20 USB drive past purchasing. We also had an offer of some GPU's at knock-down research rates so we'd get three for about 20 grand instead of the near 100 at market rates. But because it was an unapproved supplier it had to be put out to tender. So (thanks to the taxpayer) we've now spent £60,000 on the same thing.
Praise be the cobra effect of everything in the public sector being open to challenge and FOi requests.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with it to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
Just remember, it's the public sector that is wasteful.
(One of the things that has happened since the rise of academies and networks is the creep of some of these values and behaviours into schools- but at a trivial level compared with this.)
The irony is this. The talk was brutal, hilarious, deeply sad. Didn't shy away from the structural. Some heartbreaking reports he'd got. Basically saying if only he didn't display the symptoms of ADHD he'd fit in well. Had loads of the staff in tears. Particularly many of the TA's who have their own diagnoses and experiences. The Senior Leadership Team weren't there. They were having vital meetings about the budget. The teachers who needed to be there weren't there. They weren't interested. They were on exchange jollies with mainstream schools. Where they'll have learned some more techniques for shouting at kids to line up and stop fidgeting. So on we go. To another Monday.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with ADHD to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
This was a FTSE 250 Financial Services firm that would, once a year, hold a big event for its key employees, partners, etc. They'd have the CEO give a big gee up speech; a couple of famous people would come and give their views, etc. And then everyone would socialise, etc.
It probably cost them £1m to host. Which is a lot of money. But it was also an effective marketing tool. You might think Al Gore is a bit of a bore, but for Company X's partners to say "I was with Al Gore last week and he said...", that was invaluable. It was all part of the bullshit that is the financial advisory business.
The admission that it's actually all bullshit is one of the reasons I have the greatest respect for you.
'Analysis by the TUC of official figures shows that workers among the top 1% of earners, with an annual income of at least £180,000, were paid 7.9% more than last year, up from 3.7% in January.
By contrast, those who are paid £59,000 a year saw the rate of their wage rises fall from 7.2% to 5.5% a year, while workers receiving £26,300 a year saw an even bigger fall in annual wage rises, from 9.5% in January to 4.7% in April.
Last year, the increasing cost of gas and electricity and the higher price of food were blamed for rising inflation.
But the ONS said May’s 8.7% inflation rate, unchanged from April, was mainly due to a surge in demand for discretionary services, including restaurants, hotels, entertainment and flights abroad.
'Analysis by the TUC of official figures shows that workers among the top 1% of earners, with an annual income of at least £180,000, were paid 7.9% more than last year, up from 3.7% in January.
By contrast, those who are paid £59,000 a year saw the rate of their wage rises fall from 7.2% to 5.5% a year, while workers receiving £26,300 a year saw an even bigger fall in annual wage rises, from 9.5% in January to 4.7% in April.
Last year, the increasing cost of gas and electricity and the higher price of food were blamed for rising inflation.
But the ONS said May’s 8.7% inflation rate, unchanged from April, was mainly due to a surge in demand for discretionary services, including restaurants, hotels, entertainment and flights abroad.
'Analysis by the TUC of official figures shows that workers among the top 1% of earners, with an annual income of at least £180,000, were paid 7.9% more than last year, up from 3.7% in January.
By contrast, those who are paid £59,000 a year saw the rate of their wage rises fall from 7.2% to 5.5% a year, while workers receiving £26,300 a year saw an even bigger fall in annual wage rises, from 9.5% in January to 4.7% in April.
Last year, the increasing cost of gas and electricity and the higher price of food were blamed for rising inflation.
But the ONS said May’s 8.7% inflation rate, unchanged from April, was mainly due to a surge in demand for discretionary services, including restaurants, hotels, entertainment and flights abroad.
'Analysis by the TUC of official figures shows that workers among the top 1% of earners, with an annual income of at least £180,000, were paid 7.9% more than last year, up from 3.7% in January.
By contrast, those who are paid £59,000 a year saw the rate of their wage rises fall from 7.2% to 5.5% a year, while workers receiving £26,300 a year saw an even bigger fall in annual wage rises, from 9.5% in January to 4.7% in April.
Last year, the increasing cost of gas and electricity and the higher price of food were blamed for rising inflation.
But the ONS said May’s 8.7% inflation rate, unchanged from April, was mainly due to a surge in demand for discretionary services, including restaurants, hotels, entertainment and flights abroad.
Rumours abound that Sergei Shoigu and possibly also Valery Gerasimov have been sacked. These are supposedly being spread on pro-government Russian Telegram channels. The Times is spreading the rumour too:
If this is true - but it's unlikely to be - it essentially means the Prigozhin rebellion was successful.
If it were possible to bet on the next Russian president, I'd have invested in Shaman Shoigu. If he has been sacked, FFS! I don't actually believe he has, but who knows? Among other things this would also add weight to the idea that the FSB (meaning Putin but as FSB man not as anything else) controlled both sides of the street in the recent "march on Moscow" shenanigans.
The Times are wrong to say Prigozhin demanded that Shoigu and Gerasimov be "handed over" to Wagner. He said he wanted them to come and meet him.
The Times say "Shoigu’s whereabouts are unknown, but there were rumours last night he had been fired or even detained. [,,,] Neither official [Shoigu or Gerasimov] made any public statements during yesterday’s crisis and their whereabouts are unclear." I'd take that with a pinch of salt. Similar rumours were spread about Putin too. But as I said, who knows?
It's evident knives are out for Shoigu... BUT...
@Leon note: Shoigu is a collector of rare oriental swords and Aztec sacrificial daggers.
(Earlier in her career, she founded an "ethics" center at Princeton.)
Among my many wrong predictions is that Boris would be given a similarly well-remunerated moose head chair in classics or politics at an American university.
'Analysis by the TUC of official figures shows that workers among the top 1% of earners, with an annual income of at least £180,000, were paid 7.9% more than last year, up from 3.7% in January.
By contrast, those who are paid £59,000 a year saw the rate of their wage rises fall from 7.2% to 5.5% a year, while workers receiving £26,300 a year saw an even bigger fall in annual wage rises, from 9.5% in January to 4.7% in April.
Last year, the increasing cost of gas and electricity and the higher price of food were blamed for rising inflation.
But the ONS said May’s 8.7% inflation rate, unchanged from April, was mainly due to a surge in demand for discretionary services, including restaurants, hotels, entertainment and flights abroad.
They're [the government] 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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
I agree in essence. But like sandpit on PT you are skewing the language towards your favoured option.
Public services would need to be 'cut'. Just saying 'rethought' is already finessing and spinning things.
If we want that honest 'grown up' conversation (which we do) it has to feature the unvarnished truth.
“Rethought” is not the same as “cut”
It implies doing less, but doing it better: ie narrower scope but appropriately funded and well executed. “Cut” is just taking a slice off all budgets without thinking about what the government *should* be doing.
The NHS is a classic. The argument is never “what do we want to achieve and how do we do it in the best possible way”. It’s always “the budget is only up 4% not 5%. You’re killing the NHS!”
This is not true. People -- those in the NHS, researchers, think tanks, Dept of Health civil servants, government and more -- are constantly rethinking how to run the NHS, at all levels. (Indeed, one of the problems the NHS faces, I would suggest, is how often the government loves a big re-organisation of the NHS.)
I suggest there is more time and effort spent on rethinking the NHS than there is on most any other publicly-funded endeavour.
Not the key question - what do we want the NHS to do. And not in the public political debate.
Almost every healthcare expert for decades has reckoned there should be more focus on primary care. Their motivations vary, to improve mental health, concerns about social conditions, free up resources for specialised treatment and so on. They may want to manage primary care in different ways, but they are agreed on the basic premise: that's where the priority needs to be.
Of course the public debate is almost entirely about hospitals.
IMV the NHS should be split in 4 - primary, chronic, acute and social.
(Earlier in her career, she founded an "ethics" center at Princeton.)
That's not that uncommon for - say - Supreme Court Justices and former VPs and Presidents. Their job is not to teach, but to enable the University to fund raise more effectively.
'Analysis by the TUC of official figures shows that workers among the top 1% of earners, with an annual income of at least £180,000, were paid 7.9% more than last year, up from 3.7% in January.
By contrast, those who are paid £59,000 a year saw the rate of their wage rises fall from 7.2% to 5.5% a year, while workers receiving £26,300 a year saw an even bigger fall in annual wage rises, from 9.5% in January to 4.7% in April.
Last year, the increasing cost of gas and electricity and the higher price of food were blamed for rising inflation.
But the ONS said May’s 8.7% inflation rate, unchanged from April, was mainly due to a surge in demand for discretionary services, including restaurants, hotels, entertainment and flights abroad.
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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
While much of this is true, it is also the case that other countries have had similar situations to us, and have managed to avoid excessively expensive housing or stagnant business investment.
They therefore cannot be the whole story.
It's almost as if our planning system might be different to theirs.
The largest cost in household budgets is Housing. Not food, not gas, not electricity or anything else it is housing.
A very large proportion of the cost of housing is the cost of land.
And the cost of land with planning permission is inflated over land without.
Resolve one and others follow.
Indeed. Fundamentally, the cost of accommodation is a total rip-off - and it's even worse for renters than mortgage payers. Myself, if I was a renter - even living as I do in a modest one-bed flat - rather than owning outright then I'd be paying about as much for housing as all my other basic bills put together, including a healthy food budget as well as energy, TV/broadband and water.
This is why there's been such a mass pile-in into the BTL landlord business by small investors. It was money for old rope for anybody who could get hold of a BTL mortgage on an interest-only basis, and it's still money for old rope for any landlord who owns the rental outright or has a decent equity share. Just set up a little flat, install a renter and improve your own standard of living immensely by extracting a large chunk of their earned income for yourself. It's actually quite surprising that more people haven't done it when you think about it.
Tax rates on rents are high, compared to the untaxed status of enjoying the occupancy of a house you own yourself. Otherwise the world would indeed look like you suggest, and other countries like Switzerland look a lot more like the mass rental scenario.
Tax rates on rents are absurdly low, lower than tax rates on earned income. No NI on income from rents.
Not true, actually. I have a little field inherited from an ancestor and kept for sentimental/environmental reasons, and I get £80 pa for it from the farmer. But I have to pay NI on that. Class 2 or 3. Apparently it counts as a business.
Why doesn’t he just fill your freezer once a year like everyone else in that situation?
Doesn't produce the right sort of stuff ...
If it's bigger than a tenth of an acre it should be asking 80 per week or per month I would have thought.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with ADHD to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
This was a FTSE 250 Financial Services firm that would, once a year, hold a big event for its key employees, partners, etc. They'd have the CEO give a big gee up speech; a couple of famous people would come and give their views, etc. And then everyone would socialise, etc.
It probably cost them £1m to host. Which is a lot of money. But it was also an effective marketing tool. You might think Al Gore is a bit of a bore, but for Company X's partners to say "I was with Al Gore last week and he said...", that was invaluable. It was all part of the bullshit that is the financial advisory business.
Said the former partner on a financial advisory business…
They're [the government] 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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
I agree in essence. But like sandpit on PT you are skewing the language towards your favoured option.
Public services would need to be 'cut'. Just saying 'rethought' is already finessing and spinning things.
If we want that honest 'grown up' conversation (which we do) it has to feature the unvarnished truth.
“Rethought” is not the same as “cut”
It implies doing less, but doing it better: ie narrower scope but appropriately funded and well executed. “Cut” is just taking a slice off all budgets without thinking about what the government *should* be doing.
The NHS is a classic. The argument is never “what do we want to achieve and how do we do it in the best possible way”. It’s always “the budget is only up 4% not 5%. You’re killing the NHS!”
This is not true. People -- those in the NHS, researchers, think tanks, Dept of Health civil servants, government and more -- are constantly rethinking how to run the NHS, at all levels. (Indeed, one of the problems the NHS faces, I would suggest, is how often the government loves a big re-organisation of the NHS.)
I suggest there is more time and effort spent on rethinking the NHS than there is on most any other publicly-funded endeavour.
Not the key question - what do we want the NHS to do. And not in the public political debate.
Almost every healthcare expert for decades has reckoned there should be more focus on primary care. Their motivations vary, to improve mental health, concerns about social conditions, free up resources for specialised treatment and so on. They may want to manage primary care in different ways, but they are agreed on the basic premise: that's where the priority needs to be.
Of course the public debate is almost entirely about hospitals.
IMV the NHS should be split in 4 - primary, chronic, acute and social.
It’s too large to manage as a single organisation
And then you have multiple intra- and inter-agency coordination committees, and equipment standardisation committees, and liaisons, and meetings, and meetings, an meetings, and multiple specialists, and their PAs,and they all need offices, so now there's planning committees...
Besides, I think it already works like that: primary is GPs, acute is surgical and A&E (er to Americans), chronic is care homes and social services, social is them plus vaccinations.
They're [the government] 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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
I agree in essence. But like sandpit on PT you are skewing the language towards your favoured option.
Public services would need to be 'cut'. Just saying 'rethought' is already finessing and spinning things.
If we want that honest 'grown up' conversation (which we do) it has to feature the unvarnished truth.
“Rethought” is not the same as “cut”
It implies doing less, but doing it better: ie narrower scope but appropriately funded and well executed. “Cut” is just taking a slice off all budgets without thinking about what the government *should* be doing.
The NHS is a classic. The argument is never “what do we want to achieve and how do we do it in the best possible way”. It’s always “the budget is only up 4% not 5%. You’re killing the NHS!”
This is not true. People -- those in the NHS, researchers, think tanks, Dept of Health civil servants, government and more -- are constantly rethinking how to run the NHS, at all levels. (Indeed, one of the problems the NHS faces, I would suggest, is how often the government loves a big re-organisation of the NHS.)
I suggest there is more time and effort spent on rethinking the NHS than there is on most any other publicly-funded endeavour.
Not the key question - what do we want the NHS to do. And not in the public political debate.
Almost every healthcare expert for decades has reckoned there should be more focus on primary care. Their motivations vary, to improve mental health, concerns about social conditions, free up resources for specialised treatment and so on. They may want to manage primary care in different ways, but they are agreed on the basic premise: that's where the priority needs to be.
Of course the public debate is almost entirely about hospitals.
IMV the NHS should be split in 4 - primary, chronic, acute and social.
It’s too large to manage as a single organisation
And then you have multiple intra- and inter-agency coordination committees, and equipment standardisation committees, and liaisons, and meetings, and meetings, an meetings, and multiple specialists, and their PAs,and they all need offices, so now there's planning committees...
Besides, I think it already works like that: primary is GPs, acute is surgical and A&E (er to Americans), chronic is care homes and social services, social is them plus vaccinations.
They are all run as part of 1 organisation (except for care homes which is totally separate with different budget holders).
They should be run completely separately with NHS E/S/W playing a strategic oversight role.
The needs and priorities are different as are the resource allocation questions.
And you don’t need all the committees that you suggested… there are relatively few points where the organisations should overlap… (GP > hospital and hospital > chronic being the main ones).
Chronic is a new function which doesn’t currently exist - convalescence homes not care homes - but which would resolve the bed blocking issues. Social care is care homes and high acuity nursing homes.
They're [the government] 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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
I agree in essence. But like sandpit on PT you are skewing the language towards your favoured option.
Public services would need to be 'cut'. Just saying 'rethought' is already finessing and spinning things.
If we want that honest 'grown up' conversation (which we do) it has to feature the unvarnished truth.
“Rethought” is not the same as “cut”
It implies doing less, but doing it better: ie narrower scope but appropriately funded and well executed. “Cut” is just taking a slice off all budgets without thinking about what the government *should* be doing.
The NHS is a classic. The argument is never “what do we want to achieve and how do we do it in the best possible way”. It’s always “the budget is only up 4% not 5%. You’re killing the NHS!”
This is not true. People -- those in the NHS, researchers, think tanks, Dept of Health civil servants, government and more -- are constantly rethinking how to run the NHS, at all levels. (Indeed, one of the problems the NHS faces, I would suggest, is how often the government loves a big re-organisation of the NHS.)
I suggest there is more time and effort spent on rethinking the NHS than there is on most any other publicly-funded endeavour.
Not the key question - what do we want the NHS to do. And not in the public political debate.
Almost every healthcare expert for decades has reckoned there should be more focus on primary care. Their motivations vary, to improve mental health, concerns about social conditions, free up resources for specialised treatment and so on. They may want to manage primary care in different ways, but they are agreed on the basic premise: that's where the priority needs to be.
Of course the public debate is almost entirely about hospitals.
IMV the NHS should be split in 4 - primary, chronic, acute and social.
It’s too large to manage as a single organisation
And then you have multiple intra- and inter-agency coordination committees, and equipment standardisation committees, and liaisons, and meetings, and meetings, an meetings, and multiple specialists, and their PAs,and they all need offices, so now there's planning committees...
Besides, I think it already works like that: primary is GPs, acute is surgical and A&E (er to Americans), chronic is care homes and social services, social is them plus vaccinations.
If you did want to split up the NHS because it is "too large" then it would make more sense to do it by regions, as is already done between the home nations. Of course, if it turns out that already the Welsh and Scottish NHS perform as badly as the English one, then size is neither the problem nor the cure, so there is no point in yet another reorganisation, or at least not this one.
One part of the NHS that was broken off under Lansley's reforms is Public Health, which was transferred from the NHS to local authorities. The Covid Inquiry now running might look at whether this helped or hindered our response to the pandemic.
"Below is my column in the Messenger on the curious role of Hunter Biden as the “designated defendant” of the Biden family. Throughout the years of influence peddling and millions in transfers to various Biden associates and family members, Hunter remained the frontman. He is now expected to face accountability for these dealings. He even complained to his daughter in 2019 that he was being sued. Telling her that “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won’t make you give me half your salary.” While he will get off light, he will be expected to take 100 percent of any accountability as his father repeatedly says how “proud” he is of his son."
(The Bidens remind me -- a bit -- of the old Daley machine. The original Daley saw nothing wrong with family and friends making money from the city, but might sacrifice someone, if necessary.
I would be interested to learn how Hunter got so screwed up -- but not enough to do any serious research on the subject.)
Joe Biden's net worth is estimated at about $9m, which is peanuts for an ex-VP who could comfortably get $250k a speech on the lecture circuit.
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
$9m isn't particularly wealthy? The cost of living struggle is truly real.
About a decade ago, I saw Al Gore speak at a FTSE250 company event. He gave a prepackaged global warming speech for 40 minutes, shook a few hands, and disappeared off.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
Who the Hell pays for all this? We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD. When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with ADHD to become productive members of society. As I say. Window into an utterly different world. I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
This was a FTSE 250 Financial Services firm that would, once a year, hold a big event for its key employees, partners, etc. They'd have the CEO give a big gee up speech; a couple of famous people would come and give their views, etc. And then everyone would socialise, etc.
It probably cost them £1m to host. Which is a lot of money. But it was also an effective marketing tool. You might think Al Gore is a bit of a bore, but for Company X's partners to say "I was with Al Gore last week and he said...", that was invaluable. It was all part of the bullshit that is the financial advisory business.
Said the former partner on a financial advisory business…
@Gabriel_Pogrund 🚨 In 2020 the Russian embassy told the British government the Kremlin “of course” welcomed a peerage for Evgeny Lebedev
It said Boris Johnson’s nominee had strengthened UK-Russia ties
And said he could use Moscow in his title(!)— an unprecedented step
@Gabriel_Pogrund I’ve posted this in light of story breaking tonight. The Queen, it is said, was asked to block Lebedev’s peerage after Boris Johnson ignored repeated warnings he posed a threat to national security.
Boris stretched the rules to give Lord Lebedev his peerage, specifically overruling objections on national security grounds. Did we not already know this? It makes the fuss over Nadine Dorries and Charlotte Owen look like small beer. At least they do not have fathers in Putin's inner circle.
Anyhoo, STWOK is on Film4+1 and they're in the Mutara Nebula, so laters alligators
I'm laughing at the superior intellect
I grew up with that film, and I'm impressed and horrified by remembering how old I was when I first saw it and how it looks now. As a period piece for 1980's sci-fi, a lot holds up (the model work and early CGI) and some doesn't - the set design is frequently awful. I don't want to overanalyze it (I lie) as I have to go to bed.
When it comes to Biden, to me he simply comes across as more normal than most of his peers, on his side or the Republicans.
He's clearly not normal, he's been a political animal for 50 years, but he seems it, at least compared to most in that area.
Somebody once described American politics as sham populism from elites - in other words, the most successful politicians are those who can fake being your average Joe Sixpack when they're on camera while cutting deals in private rooms in expensive restaurants while laughing at how gullible voters are behind their backs.
Biden and Bill Clinton are particularly good at that, and over here Blair was a genius at it, and Johnson was pretty good too.
They're [the government] 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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
I agree in essence. But like sandpit on PT you are skewing the language towards your favoured option.
Public services would need to be 'cut'. Just saying 'rethought' is already finessing and spinning things.
If we want that honest 'grown up' conversation (which we do) it has to feature the unvarnished truth.
“Rethought” is not the same as “cut”
It implies doing less, but doing it better: ie narrower scope but appropriately funded and well executed. “Cut” is just taking a slice off all budgets without thinking about what the government *should* be doing.
The NHS is a classic. The argument is never “what do we want to achieve and how do we do it in the best possible way”. It’s always “the budget is only up 4% not 5%. You’re killing the NHS!”
This is not true. People -- those in the NHS, researchers, think tanks, Dept of Health civil servants, government and more -- are constantly rethinking how to run the NHS, at all levels. (Indeed, one of the problems the NHS faces, I would suggest, is how often the government loves a big re-organisation of the NHS.)
I suggest there is more time and effort spent on rethinking the NHS than there is on most any other publicly-funded endeavour.
Not the key question - what do we want the NHS to do. And not in the public political debate.
Almost every healthcare expert for decades has reckoned there should be more focus on primary care. Their motivations vary, to improve mental health, concerns about social conditions, free up resources for specialised treatment and so on. They may want to manage primary care in different ways, but they are agreed on the basic premise: that's where the priority needs to be.
Of course the public debate is almost entirely about hospitals.
IMV the NHS should be split in 4 - primary, chronic, acute and social.
It’s too large to manage as a single organisation
And then you have multiple intra- and inter-agency coordination committees, and equipment standardisation committees, and liaisons, and meetings, and meetings, an meetings, and multiple specialists, and their PAs,and they all need offices, so now there's planning committees...
Besides, I think it already works like that: primary is GPs, acute is surgical and A&E (er to Americans), chronic is care homes and social services, social is them plus vaccinations.
If you did want to split up the NHS because it is "too large" then it would make more sense to do it by regions, as is already done between the home nations. Of course, if it turns out that already the Welsh and Scottish NHS perform as badly as the English one, then size is neither the problem nor the cure, so there is no point in yet another reorganisation, or at least not this one.
One part of the NHS that was broken off under Lansley's reforms is Public Health, which was transferred from the NHS to local authorities. The Covid Inquiry now running might look at whether this helped or hindered our response to the pandemic.
Indeed the NHS is already broken into many Trusts, so in my patch we have an Acute Hospitals Trust, a Community Trust (psychiatry, District Nurses etc), and an Integrated Care Board (successor to the CCGs, and incorporates some Social Care) and Public Health is part of local government. All for a population of 1.1 million or so.
Anyone who hasn't noticed that the NHS consists of multiple operating units with different responsibilities clearly knows so little about the structure of the NHS that they can be ignored. Their advice is about as useful as someone suggesting that the Army would be better if it was broken up into units such as logistics, signals, tanks, engineers, medical etc as opposed to one big army blob.
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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
While much of this is true, it is also the case that other countries have had similar situations to us, and have managed to avoid excessively expensive housing or stagnant business investment.
They therefore cannot be the whole story.
It's almost as if our planning system might be different to theirs.
The largest cost in household budgets is Housing. Not food, not gas, not electricity or anything else it is housing.
A very large proportion of the cost of housing is the cost of land.
And the cost of land with planning permission is inflated over land without.
Resolve one and others follow.
Build new towns (or refurbish old ones) in the frozen north and left-behind regions. It solves the housing problem, levelling up and rebalancing the economy away from an overheated London in one fell swoop.
Not really
There are areas in the run down north with plenty of empty housing, just look at the photo at the top of this article....
Yes, hence the new town model, even if based on refurbishment, to include attracting new jobs. Rather than dumping grounds for borderline mentally ill drug addicts and thieves.
Why on earth would any company set up in a newly created new town that no doubt has awful connections to anywhere with any sort of existing economy ?
Government subsidies, tax concessions, northern powerhouse rail? Britain has built new towns before; there's nothing new.
NPR won't land until 2045 onwards and will connect Warrington, Manchester and Marsden, no new stops planned, just linking existing populations.
So you want to create new towns, with no links to existing economies and hope that lower taxes will attract businesses there ?
Our London based media's obsession over trains is part of the problem. Over 90% of the UK travels via Road, not Rail, especially in the North.
If you want new towns then new motorway junctions, or better yet new motorways with new junctions is the way to do it quickly. Rail can catch up afterwards.
Not just in the North, in the South away from London it's very possible too. Eg build a new motorway linking Oxford to Cambridge, extended to Bristol and Norwich perhaps, and with a junction approximately every 5 miles. New towns could spring up along that route, and not in or linked to London.
Sorry but new roads don’t solve problems - and it’s probably worth watching c4 to,or row to see Ben Elton comparing rail around London and the rest of the UK.
That sort of timid, self defeating attitude is part of the problem. Of course new roads do solve problems.
I live in a fast growing new town (they do still exist, just not enough of them). We have thousands of homes being built, all of which are getting snapped up. New shops, businesses, industry opening too.
And what is the key new transport infrastructure underpinning this? One new motorway junction, with one new A road.
There's talk we might get a train station in a few years time, I'm not holding my breath, but the new motorway junction? People who get about by road are happy with that. And outside London it's roads, not rail, that truly matters. Of course London is different but WE ARE NOT LONDON.
The problem here is that what you are now making is an argument for planning, which you claim to reject. The reason why everything is working in your development is more likely than not because decades of work went in to the new trunk roads and motorway junctions, negotiated by the Council with Highways England and the government, as well as the co-siting of commercial development and community infrastructure, and finding ways to fund all this, including through Section 106 contributions by developers. That is what planning is and the value that it adds. If you get rid of planning then none of that happens, houses get built but you can't get anywhere, there are crap roads, no shops, infrastructure etc.
You could say ok, why not just zone the land through the plan making process and then have a design code rather than having to go through the pain and delay of needing planning permission. You could well do that and some countries do. The main problem is it makes it harder to go through the first stage of the process (the plan making stage) because you need to be absolutely sure that everything is solved before you can confidently rely on a design code for the purposes of delivery.
A design code is just a delivery mechanism not an alternative to having a planning system. Looking at your example of Japan, my guess is just that they are better at planning because the state is more assertive and organised at building infrastructure. I'd guess the falling prices are more to do with historic deflation than falling demand. But I've never studied the Japanese system in detail so don't feel able to authoritively comment on it.
In summary the problem is not that a planning system exists in the first place, but because the one we have isn't working very well.
Sorry that's not remotely an argument for planning, you could not be more wrong. There isn't time for decades of work as our population levels weren't the same decades ago, and if decades of work are going into it then no wonder everything is so broken as the facts decades ago are not the facts today.
If everything is planned then I'm curious where the new railway station, new schools, new GPs and everything else are. None of them exist. I still am registered at my old GP in my old town, I've not transferred my kids schooling either, and drive across the river to a different town for those.
Organic development works better. If houses are built, but no schools etc then people will vote for what they need. Unsurprisingly at the local elections the local Lib Dem (who got elected) was not campaigning on NIMBYism, but supporting new GPs to built and new schools to be built. Because that's what the new residents need and its not all there yet. Supermarkets have opened etc because businesses like Aldi and ASDA will open branches where their customers are. Thousands of people move into an area, they'll be in like a shot to get a shot at those customers.
The state is bloody useless at planning. Design transportation, sure, then let it organically grow in what's zoned there.
Ok, so you don't think there should be planning, with the exception of road building. There should be no state provision for day to day needs etc - shops, healthcare etc, because this will follow where people choose to build houses because politicians will be elected to make it happen. There would be no public realm, or town centres, just housing and roads, and supermarkets.
This all sounds like a total disaster to me.
No. I think there should be healthcare, and schools etc but it should evolve depending upon what the voters need.
Not spend decades planning what was needed decades ago, but is totally obsolete decades later as the facts have changed so much all your plans were based on faulty assumptions.
" The public primary was the size of a country school and now has 19 demountables. The closest shops were 20 minutes away; if she forgot milk, it was a 40-minute round trip, often in traffic. Trains came hourly, even at the peak. Narrow roads were choked. The hospital repeatedly promised for nearby Rouse Hill didn’t exist, and still doesn’t. Meanwhile, the population grows exponentially."... “They knew we were coming. Where did they think we were going to shop? Where did they think our children would go to school? It comes down to better planning. Stop rushing to get people into these houses.”...
But people moving into those areas say it takes more than a bunch of rapidly constructed houses to create a community. “So here’s what’s missing,” said Angela Van Dyke of the Riverstone Neighbourhood Centre and Community Aid Service. “Everything. Public education. Public transport. Good urban design. Livability.”... Michelle Rowland, the Labor federal member for the north-west seat of Greenway (and also the communications minister), said the problem was due to a long-term failure of different levels of government to coordinate. “Developers, basically, in a lot of aspects, they do have free rein,” she said. “The incentive of the developer is to maximise land use to maximise profit. Which is why you have a lot of residents complaining [about] what normally they’d call overdevelopment, but a lot of it is to do with a lack of trees, a lack of environmental controls, houses are close together, streets are narrow.”
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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
While much of this is true, it is also the case that other countries have had similar situations to us, and have managed to avoid excessively expensive housing or stagnant business investment.
They therefore cannot be the whole story.
It's almost as if our planning system might be different to theirs.
The largest cost in household budgets is Housing. Not food, not gas, not electricity or anything else it is housing.
A very large proportion of the cost of housing is the cost of land.
And the cost of land with planning permission is inflated over land without.
Resolve one and others follow.
Build new towns (or refurbish old ones) in the frozen north and left-behind regions. It solves the housing problem, levelling up and rebalancing the economy away from an overheated London in one fell swoop.
Not really
There are areas in the run down north with plenty of empty housing, just look at the photo at the top of this article....
Yes, hence the new town model, even if based on refurbishment, to include attracting new jobs. Rather than dumping grounds for borderline mentally ill drug addicts and thieves.
Why on earth would any company set up in a newly created new town that no doubt has awful connections to anywhere with any sort of existing economy ?
Government subsidies, tax concessions, northern powerhouse rail? Britain has built new towns before; there's nothing new.
NPR won't land until 2045 onwards and will connect Warrington, Manchester and Marsden, no new stops planned, just linking existing populations.
So you want to create new towns, with no links to existing economies and hope that lower taxes will attract businesses there ?
Our London based media's obsession over trains is part of the problem. Over 90% of the UK travels via Road, not Rail, especially in the North.
If you want new towns then new motorway junctions, or better yet new motorways with new junctions is the way to do it quickly. Rail can catch up afterwards.
Not just in the North, in the South away from London it's very possible too. Eg build a new motorway linking Oxford to Cambridge, extended to Bristol and Norwich perhaps, and with a junction approximately every 5 miles. New towns could spring up along that route, and not in or linked to London.
Sorry but new roads don’t solve problems - and it’s probably worth watching c4 to,or row to see Ben Elton comparing rail around London and the rest of the UK.
That sort of timid, self defeating attitude is part of the problem. Of course new roads do solve problems.
I live in a fast growing new town (they do still exist, just not enough of them). We have thousands of homes being built, all of which are getting snapped up. New shops, businesses, industry opening too.
And what is the key new transport infrastructure underpinning this? One new motorway junction, with one new A road.
There's talk we might get a train station in a few years time, I'm not holding my breath, but the new motorway junction? People who get about by road are happy with that. And outside London it's roads, not rail, that truly matters. Of course London is different but WE ARE NOT LONDON.
The problem here is that what you are now making is an argument for planning, which you claim to reject. The reason why everything is working in your development is more likely than not because decades of work went in to the new trunk roads and motorway junctions, negotiated by the Council with Highways England and the government, as well as the co-siting of commercial development and community infrastructure, and finding ways to fund all this, including through Section 106 contributions by developers. That is what planning is and the value that it adds. If you get rid of planning then none of that happens, houses get built but you can't get anywhere, there are crap roads, no shops, infrastructure etc.
You could say ok, why not just zone the land through the plan making process and then have a design code rather than having to go through the pain and delay of needing planning permission. You could well do that and some countries do. The main problem is it makes it harder to go through the first stage of the process (the plan making stage) because you need to be absolutely sure that everything is solved before you can confidently rely on a design code for the purposes of delivery.
A design code is just a delivery mechanism not an alternative to having a planning system. Looking at your example of Japan, my guess is just that they are better at planning because the state is more assertive and organised at building infrastructure. I'd guess the falling prices are more to do with historic deflation than falling demand. But I've never studied the Japanese system in detail so don't feel able to authoritively comment on it.
In summary the problem is not that a planning system exists in the first place, but because the one we have isn't working very well.
Sorry that's not remotely an argument for planning, you could not be more wrong. There isn't time for decades of work as our population levels weren't the same decades ago, and if decades of work are going into it then no wonder everything is so broken as the facts decades ago are not the facts today.
If everything is planned then I'm curious where the new railway station, new schools, new GPs and everything else are. None of them exist. I still am registered at my old GP in my old town, I've not transferred my kids schooling either, and drive across the river to a different town for those.
Organic development works better. If houses are built, but no schools etc then people will vote for what they need. Unsurprisingly at the local elections the local Lib Dem (who got elected) was not campaigning on NIMBYism, but supporting new GPs to built and new schools to be built. Because that's what the new residents need and its not all there yet. Supermarkets have opened etc because businesses like Aldi and ASDA will open branches where their customers are. Thousands of people move into an area, they'll be in like a shot to get a shot at those customers.
The state is bloody useless at planning. Design transportation, sure, then let it organically grow in what's zoned there.
Ok, so you don't think there should be planning, with the exception of road building. There should be no state provision for day to day needs etc - shops, healthcare etc, because this will follow where people choose to build houses because politicians will be elected to make it happen. There would be no public realm, or town centres, just housing and roads, and supermarkets.
This all sounds like a total disaster to me.
No. I think there should be healthcare, and schools etc but it should evolve depending upon what the voters need.
Not spend decades planning what was needed decades ago, but is totally obsolete decades later as the facts have changed so much all your plans were based on faulty assumptions.
" The public primary was the size of a country school and now has 19 demountables. The closest shops were 20 minutes away; if she forgot milk, it was a 40-minute round trip, often in traffic. Trains came hourly, even at the peak. Narrow roads were choked. The hospital repeatedly promised for nearby Rouse Hill didn’t exist, and still doesn’t. Meanwhile, the population grows exponentially."... “They knew we were coming. Where did they think we were going to shop? Where did they think our children would go to school? It comes down to better planning. Stop rushing to get people into these houses.”...
But people moving into those areas say it takes more than a bunch of rapidly constructed houses to create a community. “So here’s what’s missing,” said Angela Van Dyke of the Riverstone Neighbourhood Centre and Community Aid Service. “Everything. Public education. Public transport. Good urban design. Livability.”... Michelle Rowland, the Labor federal member for the north-west seat of Greenway (and also the communications minister), said the problem was due to a long-term failure of different levels of government to coordinate. “Developers, basically, in a lot of aspects, they do have free rein,” she said. “The incentive of the developer is to maximise land use to maximise profit. Which is why you have a lot of residents complaining [about] what normally they’d call overdevelopment, but a lot of it is to do with a lack of trees, a lack of environmental controls, houses are close together, streets are narrow.”
Presumably he'd say that given the people exist, that is better to have houses and no schools, than to have neither houses nor schools.
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.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
While much of this is true, it is also the case that other countries have had similar situations to us, and have managed to avoid excessively expensive housing or stagnant business investment.
They therefore cannot be the whole story.
It's almost as if our planning system might be different to theirs.
The largest cost in household budgets is Housing. Not food, not gas, not electricity or anything else it is housing.
A very large proportion of the cost of housing is the cost of land.
And the cost of land with planning permission is inflated over land without.
Resolve one and others follow.
Build new towns (or refurbish old ones) in the frozen north and left-behind regions. It solves the housing problem, levelling up and rebalancing the economy away from an overheated London in one fell swoop.
Not really
There are areas in the run down north with plenty of empty housing, just look at the photo at the top of this article....
Yes, hence the new town model, even if based on refurbishment, to include attracting new jobs. Rather than dumping grounds for borderline mentally ill drug addicts and thieves.
Why on earth would any company set up in a newly created new town that no doubt has awful connections to anywhere with any sort of existing economy ?
Government subsidies, tax concessions, northern powerhouse rail? Britain has built new towns before; there's nothing new.
NPR won't land until 2045 onwards and will connect Warrington, Manchester and Marsden, no new stops planned, just linking existing populations.
So you want to create new towns, with no links to existing economies and hope that lower taxes will attract businesses there ?
Our London based media's obsession over trains is part of the problem. Over 90% of the UK travels via Road, not Rail, especially in the North.
If you want new towns then new motorway junctions, or better yet new motorways with new junctions is the way to do it quickly. Rail can catch up afterwards.
Not just in the North, in the South away from London it's very possible too. Eg build a new motorway linking Oxford to Cambridge, extended to Bristol and Norwich perhaps, and with a junction approximately every 5 miles. New towns could spring up along that route, and not in or linked to London.
Sorry but new roads don’t solve problems - and it’s probably worth watching c4 to,or row to see Ben Elton comparing rail around London and the rest of the UK.
That sort of timid, self defeating attitude is part of the problem. Of course new roads do solve problems.
I live in a fast growing new town (they do still exist, just not enough of them). We have thousands of homes being built, all of which are getting snapped up. New shops, businesses, industry opening too.
And what is the key new transport infrastructure underpinning this? One new motorway junction, with one new A road.
There's talk we might get a train station in a few years time, I'm not holding my breath, but the new motorway junction? People who get about by road are happy with that. And outside London it's roads, not rail, that truly matters. Of course London is different but WE ARE NOT LONDON.
The problem here is that what you are now making is an argument for planning, which you claim to reject. The reason why everything is working in your development is more likely than not because decades of work went in to the new trunk roads and motorway junctions, negotiated by the Council with Highways England and the government, as well as the co-siting of commercial development and community infrastructure, and finding ways to fund all this, including through Section 106 contributions by developers. That is what planning is and the value that it adds. If you get rid of planning then none of that happens, houses get built but you can't get anywhere, there are crap roads, no shops, infrastructure etc.
You could say ok, why not just zone the land through the plan making process and then have a design code rather than having to go through the pain and delay of needing planning permission. You could well do that and some countries do. The main problem is it makes it harder to go through the first stage of the process (the plan making stage) because you need to be absolutely sure that everything is solved before you can confidently rely on a design code for the purposes of delivery.
A design code is just a delivery mechanism not an alternative to having a planning system. Looking at your example of Japan, my guess is just that they are better at planning because the state is more assertive and organised at building infrastructure. I'd guess the falling prices are more to do with historic deflation than falling demand. But I've never studied the Japanese system in detail so don't feel able to authoritively comment on it.
In summary the problem is not that a planning system exists in the first place, but because the one we have isn't working very well.
Sorry that's not remotely an argument for planning, you could not be more wrong. There isn't time for decades of work as our population levels weren't the same decades ago, and if decades of work are going into it then no wonder everything is so broken as the facts decades ago are not the facts today.
If everything is planned then I'm curious where the new railway station, new schools, new GPs and everything else are. None of them exist. I still am registered at my old GP in my old town, I've not transferred my kids schooling either, and drive across the river to a different town for those.
Organic development works better. If houses are built, but no schools etc then people will vote for what they need. Unsurprisingly at the local elections the local Lib Dem (who got elected) was not campaigning on NIMBYism, but supporting new GPs to built and new schools to be built. Because that's what the new residents need and its not all there yet. Supermarkets have opened etc because businesses like Aldi and ASDA will open branches where their customers are. Thousands of people move into an area, they'll be in like a shot to get a shot at those customers.
The state is bloody useless at planning. Design transportation, sure, then let it organically grow in what's zoned there.
Ok, so you don't think there should be planning, with the exception of road building. There should be no state provision for day to day needs etc - shops, healthcare etc, because this will follow where people choose to build houses because politicians will be elected to make it happen. There would be no public realm, or town centres, just housing and roads, and supermarkets.
This all sounds like a total disaster to me.
No. I think there should be healthcare, and schools etc but it should evolve depending upon what the voters need.
Not spend decades planning what was needed decades ago, but is totally obsolete decades later as the facts have changed so much all your plans were based on faulty assumptions.
" The public primary was the size of a country school and now has 19 demountables. The closest shops were 20 minutes away; if she forgot milk, it was a 40-minute round trip, often in traffic. Trains came hourly, even at the peak. Narrow roads were choked. The hospital repeatedly promised for nearby Rouse Hill didn’t exist, and still doesn’t. Meanwhile, the population grows exponentially."... “They knew we were coming. Where did they think we were going to shop? Where did they think our children would go to school? It comes down to better planning. Stop rushing to get people into these houses.”...
But people moving into those areas say it takes more than a bunch of rapidly constructed houses to create a community. “So here’s what’s missing,” said Angela Van Dyke of the Riverstone Neighbourhood Centre and Community Aid Service. “Everything. Public education. Public transport. Good urban design. Livability.”... Michelle Rowland, the Labor federal member for the north-west seat of Greenway (and also the communications minister), said the problem was due to a long-term failure of different levels of government to coordinate. “Developers, basically, in a lot of aspects, they do have free rein,” she said. “The incentive of the developer is to maximise land use to maximise profit. Which is why you have a lot of residents complaining [about] what normally they’d call overdevelopment, but a lot of it is to do with a lack of trees, a lack of environmental controls, houses are close together, streets are narrow.”
Presumably he'd say that given the people exist, that is better to have houses and no schools, than to have neither houses nor schools.
There is something in that argument , but I don't think that is what he is saying. I think he sees the idea of town planning as being socially destructive and a massive cost with no benefits. The usual libertarian thing. But the contradiction is, that when you go and look at the libertarian societies they hold up as examples they tend to actually be quite well planned, ie Singapore and the USA, there is always an active state authority doing the zoning, brokering the economic development etc. I am pretty sure Japan will come in to this category as well.
Comments
If he's secretly much richer than he pretends, what's he doing with his money? Because all the evidence - the modest home, the travelling by train, etc. - suggests he's not a particularly wealthy man.
You don't have to be a great advocate of attachment theory or survivor guilt to see how that might not help.
Just an idea.
The cost of living struggle is truly real.
There's just the occasional (possibly inadvertently careless) phrasing on PB which opens a window onto a wholly different world.
His fee for this? $250,000.
At this point, Al Gore was 15 years out the VP's office. And he was very much a one trick pony.
Joe Biden - as Obama's ex-VP - could go around giving the same speech to corporate events twice a week at $250k a time for a decade.
He's clearly not normal, he's been a political animal for 50 years, but he seems it, at least compared to most in that area.
We have trouble getting the Local Authority to pay £200 for an hour for a guest speaker with a PhD. to educate 100 staff on ADHD.
When he's a guy with ADHD. And has a PhD in it. And we are a special school meant to be educating children with ADHD to become productive members of society.
As I say.
Window into an utterly different world.
I guess we could do with 20% spending cuts so Corporations could pay less tax is the real lesson here.
(One of the things that has happened since the rise of academies and networks is the creep of some of these values and behaviours into schools- but at a trivial level compared with this.)
It probably cost them £1m to host. Which is a lot of money. But it was also an effective marketing tool. You might think Al Gore is a bit of a bore, but for Company X's partners to say "I was with Al Gore last week and he said...", that was invaluable. It was all part of the bullshit that is the financial advisory business.
Praise be the cobra effect of everything in the public sector being open to challenge and FOi requests.
The talk was brutal, hilarious, deeply sad. Didn't shy away from the structural. Some heartbreaking reports he'd got. Basically saying if only he didn't display the symptoms of ADHD he'd fit in well.
Had loads of the staff in tears. Particularly many of the TA's who have their own diagnoses and experiences.
The Senior Leadership Team weren't there. They were having vital meetings about the budget.
The teachers who needed to be there weren't there. They weren't interested. They were on exchange jollies with mainstream schools. Where they'll have learned some more techniques for shouting at
kids to line up and stop fidgeting.
So on we go.
To another Monday.
The Penn president got an interesting job from President Biden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Gutmann And, who knows, she may be very good at it.
(Earlier in her career, she founded an "ethics" center at Princeton.)
By contrast, those who are paid £59,000 a year saw the rate of their wage rises fall from 7.2% to 5.5% a year, while workers receiving £26,300 a year saw an even bigger fall in annual wage rises, from 9.5% in January to 4.7% in April.
Last year, the increasing cost of gas and electricity and the higher price of food were blamed for rising inflation.
But the ONS said May’s 8.7% inflation rate, unchanged from April, was mainly due to a surge in demand for discretionary services, including restaurants, hotels, entertainment and flights abroad.
More than 1.2 million people work in financial services and several million more in business services, many of them with high levels of disposable income to spend on non-essential items.'
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jun/25/union-fury-as-figures-show-pay-rises-among-top-earners-driving-inflation
From the contract there's no turning back
The turning point of a career
In Korea being insincere
The holiday was fun packed
The contract still intact
The grabbing hands grab all they can
All for themselves after all
The grabbing hands grab all they can
All for themselves after all
It's a competitive world
Everything counts in large amounts
The graph on the wall
Tells the story of it all
Picture it now, see just how
The lies and deceit gained a little more power
Confidence taken in
By a sun tan and a grin
The grabbing hands grab all they can
All for themselves after all
The grabbing hands grab all they can
All for themselves after all
It's a competitive world
Everything counts in large amounts
Everything counts in large amounts
The grabbing hands grab all they can
Everything counts in large amounts
The grabbing hands grab all they can
Everything counts in large amounts
https://archive.is/bfyql
If this is true - but it's unlikely to be - it essentially means the Prigozhin rebellion was successful.
If it were possible to bet on the next Russian president, I'd have invested in Shaman Shoigu. If he has been sacked, FFS! I don't actually believe he has, but who knows? Among other things this would also add weight to the idea that the FSB (meaning Putin but as FSB man not as anything else) controlled both sides of the street in the recent "march on Moscow" shenanigans.
The Times are wrong to say Prigozhin demanded that Shoigu and Gerasimov be "handed over" to Wagner. He said he wanted them to come and meet him.
The Times say "Shoigu’s whereabouts are unknown, but there were rumours last night he had been fired or even detained. [,,,] Neither official [Shoigu or Gerasimov] made any public statements during yesterday’s crisis and their whereabouts are unclear." I'd take that with a pinch of salt. Similar rumours were spread about Putin too. But as I said, who knows?
It's evident knives are out for Shoigu... BUT...
@Leon note: Shoigu is a collector of rare oriental swords and Aztec sacrificial daggers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t-gK-9EIq4
It’s too large to manage as a single organisation
Besides, I think it already works like that: primary is GPs, acute is surgical and A&E (er to Americans), chronic is care homes and social services, social is them plus vaccinations.
They should be run completely separately with NHS E/S/W playing a strategic oversight role.
The needs and priorities are different as are the resource allocation questions.
And you don’t need all the committees that you suggested… there are relatively few points where the organisations should overlap… (GP > hospital and hospital > chronic being the main ones).
Chronic is a new function which doesn’t currently exist - convalescence homes not care homes - but which would resolve the bed blocking issues. Social care is care homes and high acuity nursing homes.
One part of the NHS that was broken off under Lansley's reforms is Public Health, which was transferred from the NHS to local authorities. The Covid Inquiry now running might look at whether this helped or hindered our response to the pandemic.
Biden and Bill Clinton are particularly good at that, and over here Blair was a genius at it, and Johnson was pretty good too.
Anyone who hasn't noticed that the NHS consists of multiple operating units with different responsibilities clearly knows so little about the structure of the NHS that they can be ignored. Their advice is about as useful as someone suggesting that the Army would be better if it was broken up into units such as logistics, signals, tanks, engineers, medical etc as opposed to one big army blob.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/here-s-what-s-missing-everything-no-schools-and-no-services-but-houses-keep-going-up-20221012-p5bp7o.html
" The public primary was the size of a country school and now has 19 demountables. The closest shops were 20 minutes away; if she forgot milk, it was a 40-minute round trip, often in traffic. Trains came hourly, even at the peak. Narrow roads were choked. The hospital repeatedly promised for nearby Rouse Hill didn’t exist, and still doesn’t. Meanwhile, the population grows exponentially."... “They knew we were coming. Where did they think we were going to shop? Where did they think our children would go to school? It comes down to better planning. Stop rushing to get people into these houses.”...
But people moving into those areas say it takes more than a bunch of rapidly constructed houses to create a community. “So here’s what’s missing,” said Angela Van Dyke of the Riverstone Neighbourhood Centre and Community Aid Service. “Everything. Public education. Public transport. Good urban design. Livability.”... Michelle Rowland, the Labor federal member for the north-west seat of Greenway (and also the communications minister), said the problem was due to a long-term failure of different levels of government to coordinate. “Developers, basically, in a lot of aspects, they do have free rein,” she said. “The incentive of the developer is to maximise land use to maximise profit. Which is why you have a lot of residents complaining [about] what normally they’d call overdevelopment, but a lot of it is to do with a lack of trees, a lack of environmental controls, houses are close together, streets are narrow.”
There is something in that argument , but I don't think that is what he is saying. I think he sees the idea of town planning as being socially destructive and a massive cost with no benefits. The usual libertarian thing. But the contradiction is, that when you go and look at the libertarian societies they hold up as examples they tend to actually be quite well planned, ie Singapore and the USA, there is always an active state authority doing the zoning, brokering the economic development etc. I am pretty sure Japan will come in to this category as well.