Shouldn't ending 62% marginal tax rates be a Conservative priority? Doesn't the Government want a tax system that encourages growth, instead of holding it back?
Inheritance tax, by contrast, is irrelevant to growth. What a waste of £7bn. The tax fairy would be disappointed.
Plenty more own properties over the £325k threshold for IHT than earn over £100k a year, the income earners he wants to slash marginal tax rates on
It's the £50,000 point that we are talking about first - the £100,000 is a different matter.
For those wondering why peace talks haven’t happened and why the Biden regime are sending more US troops to Russia; allow me to enlighten you.
Russian MIL accused Biden himself of orchestrating bioweapons production via his biolab company operating in Ukraine, Metabiota.
Biden cannot allow Ukraine to surrender and he cannot have peace talks with Putin, because Russia have presented evidence at the UN over the past 18 months, of biological weapon production by US funded labs in Ukraine, and Russia have demanded that a stipulation for peace would be a UN Security Council investigation of the US biological network in Ukraine. Biden cannot have this because he is directly involved.
Keep in mind these are the same biolabs that the MSM initially said didn’t exist at all, only to then later admit that they do exist, but claim they are totally not nefarious in any way. Hunter Biden just has ownership of a biolab company operating in Ukraine, studying bat coronaviruses BEFORE the pandemic. Nothing to see here.
This is why hundreds of billions of your dollars are in Ukraine and why Biden is willing to sacrifice the Ukrainian People down to the last man. Russia want justice for crimes against humanity via violations of the Biological Weapons Treaty, for which the punishment is death.
I’ve been telling the world since the jump; Russia’s escalation in Ukraine is backlash for the US creation of C19. Ukraine and Covid are connected.
Here is Russian General Igor Kirillov last summer, briefing the public on the US Biological network and Hunter Biden’s Metabiota.
Shouldn't ending 62% marginal tax rates be a Conservative priority? Doesn't the Government want a tax system that encourages growth, instead of holding it back?
Inheritance tax, by contrast, is irrelevant to growth. What a waste of £7bn. The tax fairy would be disappointed.
I don't like IHT but it seems a really daft one to move on at the moment. When the effective lower limit for most people is £1 million it writes its own attack lines. It is literally a tax break for millionaires.
And lots of millionaires (at least in property asset terms) and their heirs in the bluewall southern seats Sunak needs to hold who might otherwise go LD or even Starmer Labour in West London
▪️Ukraine will lose huge territories after Russia's victory, said American political scientist John Mearsheimer in an interview for "South China Morning Post",
"What will remain of Ukraine will be dysfunctional remnants that will not be able to conduct major military operations against Russia and will not meet the criteria for entry into either the EU or NATO. I think that will be the end result," he said.
▪️According to his opinion, Ukraine will lose "several large parts", which will be like half of its territory. Mearsheimer predicted that the conflict would continue for another two years.
Have we noted this Peter Kellner prediction (11 July) re GE? I think he is about right, and Lab majority is not value, while NOM is worth a look.
So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded as medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts.
If anything we need to be increasing the rate of IHT, not abolishing it.
Stupid policy though probably superficially popular.
I currently stand to pay a relatively small amount of IHT on my father's estate, although that may be in a good few years yet. I can't really avoid it because he doesn't have a lot of agency to make decisions and as POA I cannot really give it away to myself. Setting up a trust is just hassle.
I'm somewhat conflicted about this. I believe in standing on your own feet if possible and I can survive perfectly well without an inheritance, but I also don't like the government taxing money twice, particularly as a lump sum.
I quite like the idea of taxing everything at the same rate but with a caveat that you can automatically put inheritance money into a ring fenced fund and pay tax on what you take out each year as income. That would mean that those with expensive lawyers don't have an advantage in setting up trusts and also that those on benefits don't end up with effectively a 100% tax rate on relatively small sums.
If the law stays as it is I will probably make a deed of variation and give away anything above the threshold to a suitable charity (depending on my view of the government at the time).
Bear in mind that the threshold moves down a bit if you give above a certain percentage, 10% I think. But DYOR.
Yes, it isn't quite as simple as I made it sound. I think that in addition if you give away 10% you pay a lower rate on the remaining taxable amount (36% instead of 40%).
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
I assume you do this as a way of avoiding being sent to the front as cannon fodder. Nice work if you can get it - at least compared to the alternative.
Shouldn't ending 62% marginal tax rates be a Conservative priority? Doesn't the Government want a tax system that encourages growth, instead of holding it back?
Inheritance tax, by contrast, is irrelevant to growth. What a waste of £7bn. The tax fairy would be disappointed.
Plenty more own properties over the £325k threshold for IHT than earn over £100k a year, the income earners he wants to slash marginal tax rates on
Shouldn't ending 62% marginal tax rates be a Conservative priority? Doesn't the Government want a tax system that encourages growth, instead of holding it back?
Inheritance tax, by contrast, is irrelevant to growth. What a waste of £7bn. The tax fairy would be disappointed.
Plenty more own properties over the £325k threshold for IHT than earn over £100k a year, the income earners he wants to slash marginal tax rates on
Omitting RNRB again ...
There are more properties over £1 million than income earners earning over £100k a year in the UK too
Have we noted this Peter Kellner prediction (11 July) re GE? I think he is about right, and Lab majority is not value, while NOM is worth a look.
So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded as medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
I assume you do this as a way of avoiding being sent to the front as cannon fodder. Nice work if you can get it - at least compared to the alternative.
I thought the rant with the CAPITALS bore a striking resemblance to the style of another poster.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
I hope you mean chose euthanasia rather than having it done to her like a sick old dog still mysteriously attached to its existence packed off to the vet.
Have we noted this Peter Kellner prediction (11 July) re GE? I think he is about right, and Lab majority is not value, while NOM is worth a look.
So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded as medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
Have we noted this Peter Kellner prediction (11 July) re GE? I think he is about right, and Lab majority is not value, while NOM is worth a look.
So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded as medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I agree with your second point in things being less rosy for the world economy after GFC.But to your first point about economic management, we can point to specific government policies with poor economic outcomes that peer countries didn't follow to the same extent, including austerity, Brexit, COVID economic policies, extent of QE.
A lot of rich countries practised forms of austerity that make ours look laughably lenient by comparison (Ireland, Iceland, the Club Med nations). Pretty well everyone sought to cut budget deficits sharply, after 2010. Brexit is pretty small beer, overall. The COVID policies and QE definitely caused problems down the line, but it really was. case of choosing between evils.
Fundamentally, the West is no longer top dog and we aren't having enough kids.
I like the idea of abolishing IHT and instead taxing inheritance money as income in the hands of the recipient, subject to the normal rates and allowances. I think Labour under Corbyn were looking at something like this.
As one lump sum or spread over a number of years?
Ah the detail the detail. Lump sum, I think? Or maybe some amortization rules.
Either way, an incentive to leave money to people who don't have a lot already.
It makes little difference overall. Most will be taxed at 40 or 45% and for most recipients their personal allowances and 20% band will be largely used up with their regular income, every year.
Some benefit in changing a will to leave to a non-working spouse of one's offspring, I guess?
Yes, some new tricks will emerge no doubt. A better overall outcome, though, imo.
It would be a change from “Inheritance tax paid at 40% by millionaires” to “Inheritance tax paid at 40%, (or 45%, or that horrible in-between 60%) by everyone” There’s barely a less popular policy out there.
Shouldn't ending 62% marginal tax rates be a Conservative priority? Doesn't the Government want a tax system that encourages growth, instead of holding it back?
Inheritance tax, by contrast, is irrelevant to growth. What a waste of £7bn. The tax fairy would be disappointed.
Plenty more own properties over the £325k threshold for IHT than earn over £100k a year, the income earners he wants to slash marginal tax rates on
But the effective threshhold for most people is not £325K. It is £1 million.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
It’s because all the best posters are here on a Saturday morning.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I agree with your second point in things being less rosy for the world economy after GFC.But to your first point about economic management, we can point to specific government policies with poor economic outcomes that peer countries didn't follow to the same extent, including austerity, Brexit, COVID economic policies, extent of QE.
A lot of rich countries practised forms of austerity that make ours look laughably lenient by comparison (Ireland, Iceland, the Club Med nations). Pretty well everyone sought to cut budget deficits sharply, after 2010. Brexit is pretty small beer, overall. The COVID policies and QE definitely caused problems down the line, but it really was. case of choosing between evils.
Fundamentally, the West is no longer top dog and we aren't having enough kids.
No party of any stripe can easily solve that.
Shame your party makes it so miserable having children. Remember Sure Start?
Shouldn't ending 62% marginal tax rates be a Conservative priority? Doesn't the Government want a tax system that encourages growth, instead of holding it back?
Inheritance tax, by contrast, is irrelevant to growth. What a waste of £7bn. The tax fairy would be disappointed.
Plenty more own properties over the £325k threshold for IHT than earn over £100k a year, the income earners he wants to slash marginal tax rates on
But the effective threshhold for most people is not £325K. It is £1 million.
Certasinly psychologically,. given the zero rate transfer to spouse, and in practice, that's when folk encounter it.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I am curious about how the Tories get their reputation for good management of the economy? In my adult lifetime the only period of sustained econmic growth has come under Labour (1997-2007).
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
There's a pretty good Irish film about the topic that I saw recently, called Sunlight. It comes down quite positively in favour of assisted dying, in the sense of choosing the manner of your passing and being in control of it, although I remain deeply sceptical myself. There's even an inheritance too, so something for HYUFD as well.
I would only support assisted dying if a terminal illness in deep pain with less than 6 months to live, inheritance or now
@HYUFD That happens anyway. If memory serves, you are allowed to administer increasingly-large doses of morphine/whatever to alleviate pain: the patient will then have a low order of consciousness until death comes. Doctors aren't as naive about these things as people think. The problem arises when people want this codified, and all of a sudden you have edge cases, coercion, whatever.
Suicide has been legal in E&W since, what, 60/61? (coincidentally, around the same time as legal high-street betting, but that is by-the-by ) . If a person wants to take their own life then they may do so, and many means are available, of various degrees of horrificness. The problems arise when they want somebody else to help them. I do not know the answer to this.
One question that is not addressed is the religious angle. Christian orthodoxy on suicide is simple: you commit suicide, you go to Hell. I would not impose that destination - a person's life is their own - but I am not God. I would hope with some sincerity that God forgives when life becomes intolerable, as one would not want to exchange Hell on earth for Hell hereafter.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Germany is taking a sensible step forward here:
Asylum seekers with pending applications submitted by 29 March 2023, who have the relevant qualifications and a job offer, will also be allowed to seek work or undertake vocational training while their asylum application is in progress.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I am curious about how the Tories get their reputation for good management of the economy? In my adult lifetime the only period of sustained econmic growth has come under Labour (1997-2007).
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Not everyone - just the oldies and Topries who dominate the media and to some extent here. They grew up either during the Callaghan administration or on stories of it from mum and dad - like boomers going all Brexity from reading Commando comics in the 1960s. I remember my mother when Mr Blair won his election - she was absolutely convinced it would be the 1960s/70s all over again and told me to spend all my money before inflation hit it.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Germany is taking a sensible step forward here:
Asylum seekers with pending applications submitted by 29 March 2023, who have the relevant qualifications and a job offer, will also be allowed to seek work or undertake vocational training while their asylum application is in progress.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I am curious about how the Tories get their reputation for good management of the economy? In my adult lifetime the only period of sustained econmic growth has come under Labour (1997-2007).
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Germany is taking a sensible step forward here:
Asylum seekers with pending applications submitted by 29 March 2023, who have the relevant qualifications and a job offer, will also be allowed to seek work or undertake vocational training while their asylum application is in progress.
Doesn’t count, according to Tories with fingers firmly stuck in ears Rwanda is good because no one is suggesting an alternative.
I've been banging on about that for a while. It's insane that we're paying £3bn plus a year to keep hundreds of thousands of potential workers in a state of enforced economic inactivity.
Whoever was on about the Tory record of economic management has something of a point. It's been crap for the last decade.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
Some people on here would euthanise their grannies before they even start on their savings. Especially if there is no IHT.
Euthanasia wasn’t something that I’d considered until very recently. However, now (almost) housebound and with other problems it is growing in attractiveness
@OldKingCole I understand and sympathise, but try not to do it if you can, yes? There's no nice ways of doing it, and even the painless methods involve a high degree of psychological trauma. Avert and adapt if you can.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
Much of Russian military thinking seems to be - “That failed. So if we do the same thing again, but with more Stonk…”
If anything we need to be increasing the rate of IHT, not abolishing it.
Stupid policy though probably superficially popular.
I quite like the idea of taxing everything at the same rate but with a caveat that you can automatically put inheritance money into a ring fenced fund and pay tax on what you take out each year as income. That would mean that those with expensive lawyers don't have an advantage in setting up trusts and also that those on benefits don't end up with effectively a 100% tax rate on relatively small sums.
I like this as an idea. Inheritance taxed as income/CGT but in a pot and taxed when removed. Alternatively restore the CGT threshold (greatly reduced by this government) and allow previous years unused allowances to be carried forward, as we do with pension allowances.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I think that I am as dry as you on government finances. The freezing of thresholds of tax bands is going to be quite a stealth tax over the next few years, and probably a necessary one to gradually reduce the deficit.
To do that and abolish IHT is a net transfer of tax from wealth to income, further increasing generational inequality.
Worth noting too that the mooted decrease in house prices of 10-15% in absolute terms, or 20-40% in real terms will have quite an impact on estate size and IHT receipts.
It would be a price worth paying in that it would reduce intergenerational unfairness and wealth inequality. It is very, very difficult in this country to accumulate capital from income, the latter is taxed far too highly. In contrast capital generated from capital is barely touched. It drives inequality and many other of our social ills.
Interesting that it's often us who fret about taxation inequity, balance of payments, food security, health and so on, while the Tories on PB just say meh and go all out for Trussonomics and Sunakonomics andf bribery of a very small part of the UK population.
Sunakonomics is swiftly becoming Trussonomics in a spreadsheet with prettier conditional formatting.
Nope, Hunt has still reversed most of the Kwarteng tax cuts and keeping a close cap on spending.
The IHT cut would NOT come in this Parliament, only if the Tories got a mandate for it as a manifesto commitment by winning the next election
So they get the downsides of promising it now (ostensibly popular it could well be, but in an atmosphere where people dislike the government the obvious Labour attack lines will hit home), without the benefits of people benefiting from it.
No the upsides, it is targeted at the key bluewall swing voter Rishi is now focused on. It is all about shoring up the core vote now, forget the redwall, long gone and if people vote for it then it has a mandate while for now the government can keep focusing on the finances and cutting inflation and borrowing
Blue wall voter: I can only get this thing if the country as a whole votes Tory. I still would, but they look like losing elsewhere because no one else will like this, so there's not much point voting for them. I think I'll stay home. After all, they haven't stopped the boat people.
Blue wall voters care far more about scrapping IHT than stopping the boats, the latter is more a redwall issue.
Indeed some of the blue wall voters in West London and Surrey probably end up with some of the boat migrants as gardeners and domestic staff!
Germany is taking a sensible step forward here:
Asylum seekers with pending applications submitted by 29 March 2023, who have the relevant qualifications and a job offer, will also be allowed to seek work or undertake vocational training while their asylum application is in progress.
Doesn’t count, according to Tories with fingers firmly stuck in ears Rwanda is good because no one is suggesting an alternative.
I've been banging on about that for a while. It's insane that we're paying £3bn plus a year to keep hundreds of thousands of potential workers in a state of enforced economic inactivity.
Whoever was on about the Tory record of economic management has something of a point. It's been crap for the last decade.
And Brexit to cap a catalogue of incompetence and wilful self harm. Shouldn’t be in charge of a whelkstall never mind the British economy.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Can you please up your game?
We normally have a much higher standard of Russian troll on a Saturday morning. Have the usual ones been sent to the gulag?
Yet more evidence that Putin is valuing loyalty over competence. It won't end well. At this rate even the likes of Tucker Carlson, Seymour Hirsch and Marjorie Taylor Greene will start having doubts.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
There's a pretty good Irish film about the topic that I saw recently, called Sunlight. It comes down quite positively in favour of assisted dying, in the sense of choosing the manner of your passing and being in control of it, although I remain deeply sceptical myself. There's even an inheritance too, so something for HYUFD as well.
I would only support assisted dying if a terminal illness in deep pain with less than 6 months to live, inheritance or now
@HYUFD That happens anyway. If memory serves, you are allowed to administer increasingly-large doses of morphine/whatever to alleviate pain: the patient will then have a low order of consciousness until death comes. Doctors aren't as naive about these things as people think. The problem arises when people want this codified, and all of a sudden you have edge cases, coercion, whatever.
Suicide has been legal in E&W since, what, 60/61? (coincidentally, around the same time as legal high-street betting, but that is by-the-by ) . If a person wants to take their own life then they may do so, and many means are available, of various degrees of horrificness. The problems arise when they want somebody else to help them. I do not know the answer to this.
One question that is not addressed is the religious angle. Christian orthodoxy on suicide is simple: you commit suicide, you go to Hell. I would not impose that destination - a person's life is their own - but I am not God. I would hope with some sincerity that God forgives when life becomes intolerable, as one would not want to exchange Hell on earth for Hell hereafter.
Yes but if you consciously kill even a terminal ill person you are guilty of murder.
The Vatican says suicide is wrong, I don't think Jesus mentioned it. Indeed even former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey backs euthanasia with controls now
If Sunak hates IHT so much why has he frozen the bands?
The policy being floated is not necessarily from Sunak. That’s how factions in political parties try and get policies - brief the press and point to the resulting polling.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I am curious about how the Tories get their reputation for good management of the economy? In my adult lifetime the only period of sustained econmic growth has come under Labour (1997-2007).
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Not everyone - just the oldies and Topries who dominate the media and to some extent here. They grew up either during the Callaghan administration or on stories of it from mum and dad - like boomers going all Brexity from reading Commando comics in the 1960s. I remember my mother when Mr Blair won his election - she was absolutely convinced it would be the 1960s/70s all over again and told me to spend all my money before inflation hit it.
I agree with that to an extent. I just started with Thatcher because it's within my memory, but going back to my childhood it felt like Callaghan was trying to deal with the mess he inherited from Heath (Tories again) and the Oil Crisis. I can see some blame being put at Wilson's door for mismanagement in his first term. Tory performance in the 50's was hardly stellar either, from what I can see. So prior to my own experience it feels like a 2-2 draw on the economic cock-up front.
Shouldn't ending 62% marginal tax rates be a Conservative priority? Doesn't the Government want a tax system that encourages growth, instead of holding it back?
Inheritance tax, by contrast, is irrelevant to growth. What a waste of £7bn. The tax fairy would be disappointed.
Plenty more own properties over the £325k threshold for IHT than earn over £100k a year, the income earners he wants to slash marginal tax rates on
But the effective threshhold for most people is not £325K. It is £1 million.
And as I also said more properties over £1 million than income earners over £100k in the UK now too
If anything we need to be increasing the rate of IHT, not abolishing it.
Stupid policy though probably superficially popular.
I quite like the idea of taxing everything at the same rate but with a caveat that you can automatically put inheritance money into a ring fenced fund and pay tax on what you take out each year as income. That would mean that those with expensive lawyers don't have an advantage in setting up trusts and also that those on benefits don't end up with effectively a 100% tax rate on relatively small sums.
I like this as an idea. Inheritance taxed as income/CGT but in a pot and taxed when removed. Alternatively restore the CGT threshold (greatly reduced by this government) and allow previous years unused allowances to be carried forward, as we do with pension allowances.
I dislike the way that inheritance is taxed at the giver level, not the recipient.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I am curious about how the Tories get their reputation for good management of the economy? In my adult lifetime the only period of sustained econmic growth has come under Labour (1997-2007).
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Well Thatcher did cut strikes, slash the top income tax rate, rejuvinate Docklands, expand working class property ownership via council house sales and privatise inefficient nationalise industries. Major cut inflation.
Unemployment now at 4% half the 8% unemployment Labour left in 2010
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I am curious about how the Tories get their reputation for good management of the economy? In my adult lifetime the only period of sustained econmic growth has come under Labour (1997-2007).
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Well Thatcher did cut strikes, slash the top income tax rate, rejuvinate Docklands, expand working class property ownership via council house sales and privatise inefficient nationalise industries. Major cut inflation.
Unemployment now at 4% half the 8% unemployment Labour left in 2010
UNemployment very differently defined, to HMG's advantage.
If anything we need to be increasing the rate of IHT, not abolishing it.
Stupid policy though probably superficially popular.
I quite like the idea of taxing everything at the same rate but with a caveat that you can automatically put inheritance money into a ring fenced fund and pay tax on what you take out each year as income. That would mean that those with expensive lawyers don't have an advantage in setting up trusts and also that those on benefits don't end up with effectively a 100% tax rate on relatively small sums.
I like this as an idea. Inheritance taxed as income/CGT but in a pot and taxed when removed. Alternatively restore the CGT threshold (greatly reduced by this government) and allow previous years unused allowances to be carried forward, as we do with pension allowances.
If you want to go the full Brown*, you could:
Hold the pot as a 'government inheritance investment fund' Not pay interest on it (or only a minimal amount) to prevent it being sat on for too long by each inheritor.
But we all know the government would just spend it all as current income and run up debt...
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Can you please up your game?
We normally have a much higher standard of Russian troll on a Saturday morning. Have the usual ones been sent to the gulag?
Yet more evidence that Putin is valuing loyalty over competence. It won't end well. At this rate even the likes of Tucker Carlson, Seymour Hirsch and Marjorie Taylor Greene will start having doubts.
If Sunak hates IHT so much why has he frozen the bands?
The policy being floated is not necessarily from Sunak. That’s how factions in political parties try and get policies - brief the press and point to the resulting polling.
Doesn't the Times claim "discussions at the highest level"?
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Can you please up your game?
We normally have a much higher standard of Russian troll on a Saturday morning. Have the usual ones been sent to the gulag?
Yet more evidence that Putin is valuing loyalty over competence. It won't end well. At this rate even the likes of Tucker Carlson, Seymour Hirsch and Marjorie Taylor Greene will start having doubts.
I thought that was Marjorie posting as Amazon ?
It wouldn't surprise me if Putin's most loyal supporters to the end will be various talking heads in the west.
If Sunak hates IHT so much why has he frozen the bands?
The policy being floated is not necessarily from Sunak. That’s how factions in political parties try and get policies - brief the press and point to the resulting polling.
Doesn't the Times claim "discussions at the highest level"?
I read that, the way I read “senior MP”.
Which always turns out to be someone no one has heard of. In their own party.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
Much of Russian military thinking seems to be - “That failed. So if we do the same thing again, but with more Stonk…”
Julian Jessop @julianHjessop · 3h My guess is a compromise...
1. a pledge to abolish inheritance tax "when affordable"
2. in the meantime, a big increase in the threshold to make IHT fairer and tackle the problem that rising house prices will drag many more into the net - part funded by closing loopholes 👍
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I am curious about how the Tories get their reputation for good management of the economy? In my adult lifetime the only period of sustained econmic growth has come under Labour (1997-2007).
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Well Thatcher did cut strikes, slash the top income tax rate, rejuvinate Docklands, expand working class property ownership via council house sales and privatise inefficient nationalise industries. Major cut inflation.
Unemployment now at 4% half the 8% unemployment Labour left in 2010
Strikes, tax rates and asset sales are specific actions, which may or may not be beneficial as a whole but have to be assessed in conjunction with the other actions taken at the same time. Of course not everything the Tories did is bad in isolation (I am not a Labour supporter, by the way). I was thinking about management of the economy as a whole.
I would argue that council tax sales (and other asset sales) have been a bad thing, not in themselves, but because the proceeds weren't reinvested and now we as a state are poorer as a result. Certainly the lack of council housing is a contributory factor to the current housing shortage; if councils had been obliged to replace sold stock things might be different now, for example. And Major doesn't deserve any credit for reducing inflation - whose party caused it in the first place?
Yes the Tories can have a mark for reducing unemployment since 2010. But for everything else since then? Not much to crow about.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
There's a pretty good Irish film about the topic that I saw recently, called Sunlight. It comes down quite positively in favour of assisted dying, in the sense of choosing the manner of your passing and being in control of it, although I remain deeply sceptical myself. There's even an inheritance too, so something for HYUFD as well.
I would only support assisted dying if a terminal illness in deep pain with less than 6 months to live, inheritance or now
@HYUFD That happens anyway. If memory serves, you are allowed to administer increasingly-large doses of morphine/whatever to alleviate pain: the patient will then have a low order of consciousness until death comes. Doctors aren't as naive about these things as people think. The problem arises when people want this codified, and all of a sudden you have edge cases, coercion, whatever.
Suicide has been legal in E&W since, what, 60/61? (coincidentally, around the same time as legal high-street betting, but that is by-the-by ) . If a person wants to take their own life then they may do so, and many means are available, of various degrees of horrificness. The problems arise when they want somebody else to help them. I do not know the answer to this.
One question that is not addressed is the religious angle. Christian orthodoxy on suicide is simple: you commit suicide, you go to Hell. I would not impose that destination - a person's life is their own - but I am not God. I would hope with some sincerity that God forgives when life becomes intolerable, as one would not want to exchange Hell on earth for Hell hereafter.
I would hate to go to hell. I would miss arguing with @HYUFD.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
I suspect that too. Possibly also from India. I also suspect at some level they actually believe what they post.
If anything we need to be increasing the rate of IHT, not abolishing it.
Stupid policy though probably superficially popular.
I quite like the idea of taxing everything at the same rate but with a caveat that you can automatically put inheritance money into a ring fenced fund and pay tax on what you take out each year as income. That would mean that those with expensive lawyers don't have an advantage in setting up trusts and also that those on benefits don't end up with effectively a 100% tax rate on relatively small sums.
I like this as an idea. Inheritance taxed as income/CGT but in a pot and taxed when removed. Alternatively restore the CGT threshold (greatly reduced by this government) and allow previous years unused allowances to be carried forward, as we do with pension allowances.
I dislike the way that inheritance is taxed at the giver level, not the recipient.
In principle, I agree. However, as an only child, without cousins...
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
Thr big difference being that Euromaidan never pretends to be anything other than a pro-Ukraine news channel. Likewise Visegrad24 for the wider central Europe.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
There's a pretty good Irish film about the topic that I saw recently, called Sunlight. It comes down quite positively in favour of assisted dying, in the sense of choosing the manner of your passing and being in control of it, although I remain deeply sceptical myself. There's even an inheritance too, so something for HYUFD as well.
I would only support assisted dying if a terminal illness in deep pain with less than 6 months to live, inheritance or now
@HYUFD That happens anyway. If memory serves, you are allowed to administer increasingly-large doses of morphine/whatever to alleviate pain: the patient will then have a low order of consciousness until death comes. Doctors aren't as naive about these things as people think. The problem arises when people want this codified, and all of a sudden you have edge cases, coercion, whatever.
Suicide has been legal in E&W since, what, 60/61? (coincidentally, around the same time as legal high-street betting, but that is by-the-by ) . If a person wants to take their own life then they may do so, and many means are available, of various degrees of horrificness. The problems arise when they want somebody else to help them. I do not know the answer to this.
One question that is not addressed is the religious angle. Christian orthodoxy on suicide is simple: you commit suicide, you go to Hell. I would not impose that destination - a person's life is their own - but I am not God. I would hope with some sincerity that God forgives when life becomes intolerable, as one would not want to exchange Hell on earth for Hell hereafter.
I would hate to go to hell. I would miss arguing with @HYUFD.
You don't think he will be there along with the rest of us?
IHT is something which is easy to continue with, but hard to re-introduce. If it's axed, no major party would be likely to suggest re-introducing it, except perhaps with a very high threshold.
Uxbridge is the political event that could turn Sunak's fortunes around. I'd concentrate on that one and not put too much effort into the other two in Somerton and Selby.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
I suspect that too. Possibly also from India. I also suspect at some level they actually believe what they post.
Agree they’re not Russian. The language isn’t quite right. @Dura_Ace could be right that they’re operating out of English-speaking Africa, with people who can pick up a lot of UK politics relatively quickly.
Today’s was a particularly bad example though. One of the trainees who goes straight to the propaganda with no attempt to ingratiate themselves in the forum first.
Quite why they target PB is another question. It’s very unlikely they’re going to change any minds on the subject here.
Regarding Squareroot's view that things were equally bad, or worse in 2010: I appreciate that this is a not uncommon view.
Never mind attacking Sunak, Labour should produce a set of posters and adverts which clearly paint the picture of how much better the period 1997-2010 was for the UK than 2010-2023/24 has been. It really wouldn't be hard, some simple graphs or simple statements of things like:
- NHS waiting times - Real income - Debt (seriously, who'd have thought would be a higher share of GDP now than in 2010?) - Growth - Inflation - Immigration - House ownership % - Days lost to strikes
I am sure PBers can think of a few others (number of Cabinet members prosecuted?)
You'd have to exclude the 2008-10 period.
The economy was in better shape, pre-2008, than now.
Not only that but ignore the effects of Brexit, covid and war in Ukraine all in the last 3 years, which are the unique drivers to where we are today
More excuses than a pregnant nun!
Hard to face reality then
I'm sure you were arguing that we should ignore the Global Financial Crisis when thinking about howe to vote back in 2010, Big_G ;-)
In truth, every government faces unexpected events. Labour had 9/11, 7/7 and the GFC; Tories had Brexit, Covid, Ukraine.
But Brexit was entirely of the Conservative Government's making.
You can't put that down as an "act of God" unless your god is called Boris Johnson.
Indeed true, but Big_G was using it as a reason for the Tories utter screw-up of the economy over the past 13 years, so I allowed him that one.
Some Tories, of course, still cling to the idea that the GFC was all Labour's fault (in which case they had a mighty impressive ability to influence the global economy).
Bottom line though, are there any PB posters, of whatever persuasion, who think the Tories have managed the economy at all well?
I'd say that their economic management has been about average, for rich world governments, from 2010 to date.
Almost every rich country has been dealt a rotten hand, over the past 13 years.
Real criticism of the government lies elsewhere, IMHO. The corruption, the infighting, and the very odd sense of priorities, in terms of public spending. The almost wilful ineptititude with which they run institutions.
I am curious about how the Tories get their reputation for good management of the economy? In my adult lifetime the only period of sustained econmic growth has come under Labour (1997-2007).
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Well Thatcher did cut strikes, slash the top income tax rate, rejuvinate Docklands, expand working class property ownership via council house sales and privatise inefficient nationalise industries. Major cut inflation.
Unemployment now at 4% half the 8% unemployment Labour left in 2010
You can't look at Thatcher in isolation. Lots of her critics like to look at what followed but few of them are willing to look at the horrendous situation before she came to power. Even to get things back to some form of stability was a massive achievement and the transformational stuff she did in the middle part of her time in office undoubtedly changed Britain for the better.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
So the Ukrainians couldn’t be good at this on their own?
Maybe the Russian failure is that they are following the orders of *their* puppet masters. The Chinese, perhaps?
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
I suspect that too. Possibly also from India. I also suspect at some level they actually believe what they post.
Agree they’re not Russian. The language isn’t quite right. @Dura_Ace could be right that they’re operating out of English-speaking Africa, with people who can pick up a lot of UK politics relatively quickly.
Today’s was a particularly bad example though. One of the trainees who goes straight to the propaganda with no attempt to ingratiate themselves in the forum first.
Quite why they target PB is another question. It’s very unlikely they’re going to change any minds on the subject here.
Have we noted this Peter Kellner prediction (11 July) re GE? I think he is about right, and Lab majority is not value, while NOM is worth a look.
So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded as medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts.
I take from this that a large third party makes a 5%-ish lead fragile: contrariwise, the lack of a large third party makes a 5%-ish lead robust. Incidentally this contradicts @MoonRabbit's Dutch Salute theory, although we can reconcile them by thinking of you two dealing with the UK as a whole, with @MoonRabbit dealing with regions: different granularity.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
I suspect that too. Possibly also from India. I also suspect at some level they actually believe what they post.
Agree they’re not Russian. The language isn’t quite right. @Dura_Ace could be right that they’re operating out of English-speaking Africa, with people who can pick up a lot of UK politics relatively quickly.
Today’s was a particularly bad example though. One of the trainees who goes straight to the propaganda with no attempt to ingratiate themselves in the forum first.
Quite why they target PB is another question. It’s very unlikely they’re going to change any minds on the subject here.
On the white board in the office they have a sign:
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
I suspect that too. Possibly also from India. I also suspect at some level they actually believe what they post.
Agree they’re not Russian. The language isn’t quite right. @Dura_Ace could be right that they’re operating out of English-speaking Africa, with people who can pick up a lot of UK politics relatively quickly.
Today’s was a particularly bad example though. One of the trainees who goes straight to the propaganda with no attempt to ingratiate themselves in the forum first.
Quite why they target PB is another question. It’s very unlikely they’re going to change any minds on the subject here.
PB is widely read in high end politics. MPs etc.
Oh indeed, but you’re going to be a lot more subtle if you want to actually change mind on this forum, rather than charging in like a bull in a china shop of propaganda.
Inheritance tax raised about £7 billion last year. That was less than the amount of interest paid on government debt in the single month of May 2023 alone.
It isn't a lot of money in government terms, and inheritance tax does create a lot of work for accountants in avoidance schemes.
Historically death duties were important in breaking up large estates and reducing inequality, but not much any longer.
Replace it with a better structured property tax (as the form of wealth hardest to hide) paid annually.
Or reduce wasteful government spending?
Funnily enough, as a public sector worker, you never seem to see this staggeringly obvious alternative.
The problem is twofold.
* Not all government spending is wasteful government spending. If you have a sovereign state in a Westphalian world, then you have to pay for it. This neoliberalism idea of continually cutting the state has reached and passed its limit. We have to stop indulging in fantasy politics and start actually paying for things. Like normal people. * A shit-ton of government spending is debt repayment. You either default, dilute the debt away thru inflation, or pay it. Pick one.
We also need to consider that the scope for tax cuts is limited by the poor state of public finances. Last years budget deficit was £139 billion, or 20x this mooted IHT cut. It is a rounding error.
In May, government debt passed 100% of GDP, the highest since 1961. Higher than either the GFC bailout or covid years.
No its not. Denis Healey's favourite aphorism of the first you do in a hole is stop digging comes to mind. We have, through a series of crises, got used to dangerously large government deficits. The GFC, Covid, high gas prices, the reasons and justifications just keep coming. And it has to stop. We are kidding ourselves, paying for a standard of living we are not earning with our children's money. Its immoral and wrong.
I don't doubt that in coming decades, euthanasia, as a means of solving fiscal problems, will become an increasingly live suggestion in Western countries.
The mother of my brother's ex was recently euthanised in Holland. It seems to be much more openly accepted there already.
Yeugh! Put like that it sounds terrible, nightmarish.
Euthanised once you've exhausted your pension pot and lifetime NHS allowance. It is a bit dystopian.
It's the way we're heading though.
Not something I am comfortable with.
The situation in Canada looks pretty troubling, as pretty quickly an open approach to it seems to have developed close to attitudes of you 'can' to you 'probably should'. Not fully there yet, but it's getting there.
There's a pretty good Irish film about the topic that I saw recently, called Sunlight. It comes down quite positively in favour of assisted dying, in the sense of choosing the manner of your passing and being in control of it, although I remain deeply sceptical myself. There's even an inheritance too, so something for HYUFD as well.
I would only support assisted dying if a terminal illness in deep pain with less than 6 months to live, inheritance or now
@HYUFD That happens anyway. If memory serves, you are allowed to administer increasingly-large doses of morphine/whatever to alleviate pain: the patient will then have a low order of consciousness until death comes. Doctors aren't as naive about these things as people think. The problem arises when people want this codified, and all of a sudden you have edge cases, coercion, whatever.
Suicide has been legal in E&W since, what, 60/61? (coincidentally, around the same time as legal high-street betting, but that is by-the-by ) . If a person wants to take their own life then they may do so, and many means are available, of various degrees of horrificness. The problems arise when they want somebody else to help them. I do not know the answer to this.
One question that is not addressed is the religious angle. Christian orthodoxy on suicide is simple: you commit suicide, you go to Hell. I would not impose that destination - a person's life is their own - but I am not God. I would hope with some sincerity that God forgives when life becomes intolerable, as one would not want to exchange Hell on earth for Hell hereafter.
I would hate to go to hell. I would miss arguing with @HYUFD.
You don't think he will be there along with the rest of us?
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
I suspect that too. Possibly also from India. I also suspect at some level they actually believe what they post.
Agree they’re not Russian. The language isn’t quite right. @Dura_Ace could be right that they’re operating out of English-speaking Africa, with people who can pick up a lot of UK politics relatively quickly.
Today’s was a particularly bad example though. One of the trainees who goes straight to the propaganda with no attempt to ingratiate themselves in the forum first.
Quite why they target PB is another question. It’s very unlikely they’re going to change any minds on the subject here.
Derails the conversations and gives cover to our less obvious propaganda pushers.
The confident mocking respinses have gone. Honestly can you guys get anything right...erm no.
Curious why all these trolls turn up on Saturday mornings. Can't see any reason for it. Are they working off some spreadsheet with a Saturday am cell marked "politicalbetting.com" and nobody can be arsed to change it?
They are not Russian because their English is not how Russians write and speak in that language.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
I suspect that too. Possibly also from India. I also suspect at some level they actually believe what they post.
My Indian colleagues in IT joke about the attitude in the low end contracting stuff from Mumbai. They cheerlead for whatever the guy who pays, says.
So vehement enthusiast for NoSQL on one project. While Oracle is the Only Way on another project they are working on. At the same time.
The acting level is very good - to a naive person it would, indeed, seem like belief.
Comments
If the latter, more work needed to be convincing. If the former, morning Svetlana!
Russian MIL accused Biden himself of orchestrating bioweapons production via his biolab company operating in Ukraine, Metabiota.
Biden cannot allow Ukraine to surrender and he cannot have peace talks with Putin, because Russia have presented evidence at the UN over the past 18 months, of biological weapon production by US funded labs in Ukraine, and Russia have demanded that a stipulation for peace would be a UN Security Council investigation of the US biological network in Ukraine. Biden cannot have this because he is directly involved.
Keep in mind these are the same biolabs that the MSM initially said didn’t exist at all, only to then later admit that they do exist, but claim they are totally not nefarious in any way. Hunter Biden just has ownership of a biolab company operating in Ukraine, studying bat coronaviruses BEFORE the pandemic. Nothing to see here.
This is why hundreds of billions of your dollars are in Ukraine and why Biden is willing to sacrifice the Ukrainian People down to the last man. Russia want justice for crimes against humanity via violations of the Biological Weapons Treaty, for which the punishment is death.
I’ve been telling the world since the jump; Russia’s escalation in Ukraine is backlash for the US creation of C19. Ukraine and Covid are connected.
Here is Russian General Igor Kirillov last summer, briefing the public on the US Biological network and Hunter Biden’s Metabiota.
https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/1679658916932616194?s=20
In 2017 Con had 42.3% vs Lab 40% and Con still nearly had a majority. I don't see how Lab/Con split 40/35 and Lab not get a majority, TBH
OK, PB brains trust. Has any party that had a 5% lead or more in a GE ever NOT had a majority?
But that would be my principle anyway.
Your line manager could see your answer, so think carefully before you answer. Silence will be seen as treachery.
Does L**n get bored on Saturday mornings?
Edit. LOL Sorry just seen bondegezou's comment. I hadn't realised the diffrence was that much in 2010.
But don't you have anything better to do ?
No party of any stripe can easily solve that.
Not bad for an octogenarian.
The $100 billion bet that a postindustrial US city can reinvent itself as a high-tech hub
Can a massive infusion of money for making computer chips transform the economy of Syracuse and show us how to rebuild the nation’s industrial base?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/07/06/1075817/micron-syracuse-chips-economic-development-technology/
That's less than Boris can make spouting his after dinner piffle.
Pence raises just $3.8M in Q2
The former vice president has struggled to gain traction in the crowded GOP field.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/14/pence-raises-just-3-8-million-in-q2-00106415
I entered adulthood in the Thatcher years in the middle of a long recession. I started work on 1988 on a slight economic upswing from a low base but by the time we got to February 1989 things were on the down again and my friends seeking work a year behind me all really struggled to find jobs. We also had a burst of 10% inflation.
The early 90s were grim, we fell out of the ERM, there was a property bust, and I lost my job twice in that period, and of my friends wasn't alone. I will concede that having made a complete pig's ear of everything Major and Clarke provided a steadier hand at the tiller from about 94 onwards but by then their reputation was in tatters anyway.
The we get to 2010. I felt at the time that some austerity was needed for a while to balance the books. It was probably too much for too long even under the coalition, but once the restraining had of the LDs was removed it has been an utter shitshow.
On the other hand under Labour not only did the economy grow, the public realm also visibly improved. The GFC revealed that they hadn't been attentive enough in building up reserves for a rainy day, as in fact they had done in the first few years. But overall 1997-2010 is a far better record than anything the Tories can point at, without even having to bother to look up statistics.
Looking at the current Labour leadership, Starmer seems more of a conservative than anyone in the current Conservative Party. Yet "everyone" is scared of Labour trashing the economy. Why?
Suicide has been legal in E&W since, what, 60/61? (coincidentally, around the same time as legal high-street betting, but that is by-the-by ) . If a person wants to take their own life then they may do so, and many means are available, of various degrees of horrificness. The problems arise when they want somebody else to help them. I do not know the answer to this.
One question that is not addressed is the religious angle. Christian orthodoxy on suicide is simple: you commit suicide, you go to Hell. I would not impose that destination - a person's life is their own - but I am not God. I would hope with some sincerity that God forgives when life becomes intolerable, as one would not want to exchange Hell on earth for Hell hereafter.
We normally have a much higher standard of Russian troll on a Saturday morning. Have the usual ones been sent to the gulag?
As one of Putin’s Big Weapons, it’s a fail. Maybe it could work on dust on high windows?
It's insane that we're paying £3bn plus a year to keep hundreds of thousands of potential workers in a state of enforced economic inactivity.
Whoever was on about the Tory record of economic management has something of a point. It's been crap for the last decade.
Oliver Cooper
@OliverCooper
Of course Twitter doesn’t like cutting Inheritance Tax.
Twitter is dominated by the top demographic in this chart: the one and only one group that doesn’t think Inheritance Tax is too high.
Whereas the rest of Britain…
https://twitter.com/OliverCooper/status/1680147828704673795
The Vatican says suicide is wrong, I don't think Jesus mentioned it. Indeed even former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey backs euthanasia with controls now
Unemployment now at 4% half the 8% unemployment Labour left in 2010
And hardly demographics but marketeer categories, no?
Hold the pot as a 'government inheritance investment fund'
Not pay interest on it (or only a minimal amount) to prevent it being sat on for too long by each inheritor.
But we all know the government would just spend it all as current income and run up debt...
*This would not be my plan
Which always turns out to be someone no one has heard of. In their own party.
Short version - legacy satellite data provider is looking at big loss. They are stuffed long term - this will make their demise faster.
I assume they are from anglophone parts of Africa being paid buttons to push the Russian lines and have day jobs or academic commitments Mon-Fri.
It's a very crude psy-op and the Ukrainian ones (Euromaiden, Visegard24, etc. All that shit that gets reposted here by the credulous.) are much better, presumably with the help of Langley.
@julianHjessop
·
3h
My guess is a compromise...
1. a pledge to abolish inheritance tax "when affordable"
2. in the meantime, a big increase in the threshold to make IHT fairer and tackle the problem that rising house prices will drag many more into the net - part funded by closing loopholes 👍
https://twitter.com/julianHjessop/status/1680103973888438272
I would argue that council tax sales (and other asset sales) have been a bad thing, not in themselves, but because the proceeds weren't reinvested and now we as a state are poorer as a result. Certainly the lack of council housing is a contributory factor to the current housing shortage; if councils had been obliged to replace sold stock things might be different now, for example. And Major doesn't deserve any credit for reducing inflation - whose party caused it in the first place?
Yes the Tories can have a mark for reducing unemployment since 2010. But for everything else since then? Not much to crow about.
However, as an only child, without cousins...
Today’s was a particularly bad example though. One of the trainees who goes straight to the propaganda with no attempt to ingratiate themselves in the forum first.
Quite why they target PB is another question. It’s very unlikely they’re going to change any minds on the subject here.
Maybe the Russian failure is that they are following the orders of *their* puppet masters. The Chinese, perhaps?
@Richard_Tyndall: Closest I think you get is January 1910 when Balfour had a 3.3% lead but had 2 fewer seats than Asquith. See https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4473406/#Comment_4473406
@bondegezou: In 1923, The Tories had a 7.3% lead in the vote, yet still there was a hung Parliament. It’s a large third party vote that does it. See https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4473409#Comment_4473409
@bondegezou: Yes, in 2010. 36.1% to 29.0%. See https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4473403#Comment_4473403
I take from this that a large third party makes a 5%-ish lead fragile: contrariwise, the lack of a large third party makes a 5%-ish lead robust. Incidentally this contradicts @MoonRabbit's Dutch Salute theory, although we can reconcile them by thinking of you two dealing with the UK as a whole, with @MoonRabbit dealing with regions: different granularity.
Apologies to any respondent I missed.
Las Vegas likely to beat its all time high of 47
Nicosia, Cyprus forecast a stright 14 days in the 40-42 range
Change HYUFD's mind. Change the world.
So vehement enthusiast for NoSQL on one project. While Oracle is the Only Way on another project they are working on. At the same time.
The acting level is very good - to a naive person it would, indeed, seem like belief.