Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
Pretty sure the Blair government said similar things about multiculturalism, and that's when we saw stuff like the Life In The UK test being brought in.
We recently had an ESOL course funded at the Jobcentre. It's amazing how difficult it was to get people to show up. OK it was badly targeted in that it was online and a lot of older immigrants don't have the IT skills, or are indeed illiterate, but I would have thought learning the language of your new country was a prerequisite.
On Saturday, Kuwait’s Ali Zankawi lined up for one of his throws in the men’s hammer final at the eastern Chinese city’s packed Olympic stadium. But instead of soaring straight onto the outfield, the hammer flew out sideways and low to the right, smashing into the leg of the sitting technical official.
Looking horrified, Zankawi sprinted over as blood began spurting from the official’s right leg. The official, Huang Qinhua, 62, grimaced and swayed dizzily as Zankawi rushed to check on him, blood shooting out of the wound.
Within seconds Zankawi was using his huge hands and strength to improvise a tourniquet on Huang’s thigh and halt the bleeding. Medical personnel soon took Huang away on a stretcher after applying a tourniquet, then sent him to a nearby hospital...
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
I don't see that in the article; I read that immigration has benefits, which I am sure you agree with.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
Though you did also vote for Blair so not that loyal a Tory even before Sunak
And I'm sure you're excited to have only the purest of heart be the only ones to vote for your party next time then.
Loyal Tories would have voted Conservative in 2019 and still be voting Conservative now.
Loyal Labour would have voted Labour in 2019 and still be voting Labour now.
Everyone else is a swing voter to some degree, including you
Aye, like those who voted PC. Remember? Except there are plenty of people who voted PC then and still do, and LD, SNP, SF, EWG, SG ...
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
Though you did also vote for Blair so not that loyal a Tory even before Sunak
And I'm sure you're excited to have only the purest of heart be the only ones to vote for your party next time then.
Loyal Tories would have voted Conservative in 2019 and still be voting Conservative now.
Loyal Labour would have voted Labour in 2019 and still be voting Labour now.
Everyone else is a swing voter to some degree, including you
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
If you are referring to the Nesrine Malik article, I did laugh at her comment that figures such as Gary Lineker risked "high stakes" when it comes to speaking about immigration from a left wing view. On the contrary, Lineker is still in his job, has had the BBC's social media rules bent round to him and has probably strengthened his chances of a peerage as well as income stream from appealing to a certain type of 'Centrist' Dad type who creams themselves over the likes of GL and Gareth Southgate.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Currently we are paying nearly £100 billion pa in debt interest. I think you are suggesting that it is sustainable to be paying much much more than that. How much is too much?
The government tax take is about £1,000 billion pa. So the interest payment is about 10% of income.
If you have a mortgage, what % of your annual pay does the interest on the mortgage represent? The average UK mortgage is about £200,000. which is much more than 100% of average income. The interest payment of say £10,000 pa is 20-25% of average income of mortgage holders.
So to answer your question, I think £200 billion in debt interest is getting a bit high. Plenty of headroom at the moment.
But you have to invest the extra borrowing for a good return and not just fritter it away in tax cuts and consumer spending. Even that has some economic return in boosting the economy but capital investment should take priority for any extra borrowing.
What public services will you cut to be able to afford another £100bn in debt interest payments?
The comparison with a mortgage is absurd. People without a mortgage either have to rent or they own their home outright. It's a completely different situation to a country servicing a national debt.
The country absolutely can and should borrow to invest.
But investment means things like building infrastructure. New roads etc. Not paying day to day expenditure like salaries and calling it investment.
The country can sustainably and indefinitely run a deficit so long as it is balanced. It should over the cycle be run countercyclically, so don't max it before a downturn. But if the deficit in nominal terms is less than inflation + growth then real debt to GDP falls it doesn't rise.
People keep repeating a myth at the minute that debt servicing costs have gone up due to indexing. It's bollocks. Inflation deflates our debt, indexing isn't a real cost it just means some of our debt isn't deflated but it's not costing us any more in real terms.
Higher interest rates do mean that if you have an annual income of £100bn and you don't want to be seen to borrow (for day to day expenses) you have less money to spend on other day to day expenses.
I think one problem we (and America) has when it comes to Government investment is that few people actually understand it. They see money and think it you can take the £70bn cost of HS2 and use it elsewhere when in reality the money doesn't actually exist and just isn't going to be spent.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
Exactly the same thing happened to me. Didn't read it before, not interested, saw Leon's screeching and read it.
Leon is doing exactly what Malik says in the article: Then, after a firehose of this sort of talk, we are told by politicians that we have to tread carefully around the fears of voters who they themselves have primed to be suspicious of newcomers after years of hysterical fixation on migrants’ illegality, and their cultural and economic impact.
Further, even if the article is deemed to be a provocation (really, it's not in any way, it's very earnest) then who the fuck is Leon to bemoan such a thing anyway? He who makes a living on trying to be a bit edgy.
So, Leon, what in fuck's name are you on about? No, don't explain, your thoughts on this subject are worthless because you indulge a little to much in casual racist epithets for me to think you have a well-considered view on anything in this particular arena. You are the race grifter.
lol. “Give us your opinion no don’t coz I think you’re a racist and you’re not allowed an opinion SO THERE”
This is the discourse of an eight year old. You are a child
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
Exactly the same thing happened to me. Didn't read it before, not interested, saw Leon's screeching and read it.
Leon is doing exactly what Malik says in the article: Then, after a firehose of this sort of talk, we are told by politicians that we have to tread carefully around the fears of voters who they themselves have primed to be suspicious of newcomers after years of hysterical fixation on migrants’ illegality, and their cultural and economic impact.
Further, even if the article is deemed to be a provocation (really, it's not in any way, it's very earnest) then who the fuck is Leon to bemoan such a thing anyway? He who makes a living on trying to be a bit edgy.
So, Leon, what in fuck's name are you on about? No, don't explain, your thoughts on this subject are worthless because you indulge a little to much in casual racist epithets for me to think you have a well-considered view on anything in this particular arena. You are the race grifter.
He just lives under a bridge and tries to engage goats in inflammatory arguments.
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The government shouldn't cut HS2 to fund tax cuts... that doesn't mean that they won't.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
The target is for it to be 2/3 of the median wage by next October. In a government that overall aspires to disappointing this is a real success story in terms of making work pay and reducing income inequality.
I wouldn't want to criticise any increase in the minimum wage but the 2/3 median wage target seems to represent more the downgrading of other work in the economy, it is being gradually bought down to minimum wage levels in a comparative sense. The marginal tax (Income tax, NI) that you pay for every pound above the minimum wage is quite significant, particularly if you are paying off a student loan.
Whilst purporting to be reducing 'income inequality' the one thing the government are noticeably not doing is adding more taxes to income from wealth. It is creating a structure whereby the gap between the workers and the capitalists increases. It is a contrast to here in Finland where the taxes on wealth are similar to the taxes on employment. Therefore more money is raised to provide things like free university education and council house building, along with many other advantages for the working age population who pay similar levels of tax to people in the UK.
Like politics, all pay is relative. An £11 minimum wage is £22k pa for a 40 hour week. Some routine jobs are not complicated, interact constantly with civilised and polite folk, and have little responsibility (which is not a problem - that's life). However lots of jobs that are difficult, arduous, back breaking, interface with monsters, keep you awake all night, shouty, complex and full of blame pay between say 22 and 28k pa.
A problem will always therefore develop from the fact that you can do OK in much of the UK as a couple on minimum wage (£44k pa) and actually have a nicer life than people earning not much more.
Is this part of the background to the outbreak of strikes from junior professionals and others?
A lot of high skilled, degree level jobs in the public sector, particularly local councils are paying only slightly above minimum wage, say £26k. You are responsible for some quite heavy stuff that can blow up quickly in your face and often there is no support, your manager just complains about you. I've seen this quite a bit, people starting and then saying 'no thanks' after about 3 months. The problem then is that you find out you are on a path to nowhere. If you don't get promoted you may be on £30k after 10 years. Why not just go and drive a van or make people coffee?
Exactly. Another issue is that the £22K minimum wage person will be paying tax and NI on 9-10K of that sum, meaning that the lowest paid FT workers are paying £3K or so in tax/NI.
There is an absurdity about saying that the lowest you can earn for a FT job ('living wage') is an amount which attracts thousands in IT and NI.
And of course absurd that the tax rate on low incomes is so high, while the marginal rate on the richest isn't much more.
The lowest earners were taken out of income tax by the Coalition
And look what happens when the LDs pulled out. Years of fiscal drag and the lowest earners shovelled back into tax.
Some people whose only income is State Pension are now being dragged into Income Tax, as has been mentioned on here several times.
Quite a few OAPs with full state pension and 20-40K savings will already be in it this current year, with the rise in interest rates. It's one thing to have PAYE on the pensions but another to have bank account interest taxable - which means checking and hassle and intimidating letters saying they'll be fined £X plus double charge etc etc.
Not helped by the fact that the DWP is not capable of deducting ICT from the State Pension. So pensioners are being faced with self-assessments or HMRC Simple Assessments, many for the first time in their life. Cue much confusion and anxiety.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
Pretty sure the Blair government said similar things about multiculturalism, and that's when we saw stuff like the Life In The UK test being brought in.
We recently had an ESOL course funded at the Jobcentre. It's amazing how difficult it was to get people to show up. OK it was badly targeted in that it was online and a lot of older immigrants don't have the IT skills, or are indeed illiterate, but I would have thought learning the language of your new country was a prerequisite.
You've explained, very well, why an online ESOL course is not the way to go. FE colleges used to do huge numbers of ESOL courses (in the classroom), but the funding has been starved.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
Exactly the same thing happened to me. Didn't read it before, not interested, saw Leon's screeching and read it.
Leon is doing exactly what Malik says in the article: Then, after a firehose of this sort of talk, we are told by politicians that we have to tread carefully around the fears of voters who they themselves have primed to be suspicious of newcomers after years of hysterical fixation on migrants’ illegality, and their cultural and economic impact.
Further, even if the article is deemed to be a provocation (really, it's not in any way, it's very earnest) then who the fuck is Leon to bemoan such a thing anyway? He who makes a living on trying to be a bit edgy.
So, Leon, what in fuck's name are you on about? No, don't explain, your thoughts on this subject are worthless because you indulge a little to much in casual racist epithets for me to think you have a well-considered view on anything in this particular arena. You are the race grifter.
He just lives under a bridge and tries to engage goats in inflammatory arguments.
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
They could promise to put new railway stations next to the 40 new hospitals they have built.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Currently we are paying nearly £100 billion pa in debt interest. I think you are suggesting that it is sustainable to be paying much much more than that. How much is too much?
The government tax take is about £1,000 billion pa. So the interest payment is about 10% of income.
If you have a mortgage, what % of your annual pay does the interest on the mortgage represent? The average UK mortgage is about £200,000. which is much more than 100% of average income. The interest payment of say £10,000 pa is 20-25% of average income of mortgage holders.
So to answer your question, I think £200 billion in debt interest is getting a bit high. Plenty of headroom at the moment.
But you have to invest the extra borrowing for a good return and not just fritter it away in tax cuts and consumer spending. Even that has some economic return in boosting the economy but capital investment should take priority for any extra borrowing.
What public services will you cut to be able to afford another £100bn in debt interest payments?
The comparison with a mortgage is absurd. People without a mortgage either have to rent or they own their home outright. It's a completely different situation to a country servicing a national debt.
The country absolutely can and should borrow to invest.
But investment means things like building infrastructure. New roads etc. Not paying day to day expenditure like salaries and calling it investment.
The country can sustainably and indefinitely run a deficit so long as it is balanced. It should over the cycle be run countercyclically, so don't max it before a downturn. But if the deficit in nominal terms is less than inflation + growth then real debt to GDP falls it doesn't rise.
People keep repeating a myth at the minute that debt servicing costs have gone up due to indexing. It's bollocks. Inflation deflates our debt, indexing isn't a real cost it just means some of our debt isn't deflated but it's not costing us any more in real terms.
There will be another crisis in the future. Another pandemic, another financial crash, China might attempt to invade Taiwan, the US might be taken over by isolationist cowards, could even be an effing asteroid.
I'd rather Britain took advantage of a period between crises to pay off some of the debt accumulated during previous crises and be ready for the next one.
I'd increase taxes, pay for infrastructure investment out of current income, and reduce the national debt.
My dear is that if Britain doesn't do that, then when a future crisis hits, it's unable to borrow to deal with that crisis, and the future crisis is compounded by a sovereign debt crisis.
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The government shouldn't cut HS2 to fund tax cuts... that doesn't mean that they won't.
They will because this Government is beyond stupid and it's becoming very clear that the Treasury and it's green book investment calculations needs to be completely reformed.
The irony is that you can't do the east west NPR without HS2 - the costly part of a NPR without HS2 is the same costly reason why HS2 to Manchester is being binned - an underground tunnel into Manchester from the airport is expensive
Even though the French are doing exactly that in Marseille to make the route to Nice easier...
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
Exactly the same thing happened to me. Didn't read it before, not interested, saw Leon's screeching and read it.
Leon is doing exactly what Malik says in the article: Then, after a firehose of this sort of talk, we are told by politicians that we have to tread carefully around the fears of voters who they themselves have primed to be suspicious of newcomers after years of hysterical fixation on migrants’ illegality, and their cultural and economic impact.
Further, even if the article is deemed to be a provocation (really, it's not in any way, it's very earnest) then who the fuck is Leon to bemoan such a thing anyway? He who makes a living on trying to be a bit edgy.
So, Leon, what in fuck's name are you on about? No, don't explain, your thoughts on this subject are worthless because you indulge a little to much in casual racist epithets for me to think you have a well-considered view on anything in this particular arena. You are the race grifter.
lol. “Give us your opinion no don’t coz I think you’re a racist and you’re not allowed an opinion SO THERE”
This is the discourse of an eight year old. You are a child
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
100,000 white girls. Minimum
The scale of it is confounding. I get that PB can’t cope and would rather not think about it, but the feeble-mindedness is still shocking
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
Pretty sure the Blair government said similar things about multiculturalism, and that's when we saw stuff like the Life In The UK test being brought in.
We recently had an ESOL course funded at the Jobcentre. It's amazing how difficult it was to get people to show up. OK it was badly targeted in that it was online and a lot of older immigrants don't have the IT skills, or are indeed illiterate, but I would have thought learning the language of your new country was a prerequisite.
You've explained, very well, why an online ESOL course is not the way to go. FE colleges used to do huge numbers of ESOL courses (in the classroom), but the funding has been starved.
So they've moved it online because it's cheaper. Not grasping any of the reasons why a course in a physical building is a way better option..
It's a prime example of penny wise and pound foolish....
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
100,000 white girls. Minimum
The scale of it is confounding. I get that PB can’t cope but the feeble-mindedness is still shocking
One in four women report being raped or sexually abused. One in four.
That's approximately 8,437,500
Why don't you give a damn about 8,427,500 of them?
We need to end all abuse of women, not just be hysterical racist shitbags.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
100,000 white girls. Minimum
The scale of it is confounding. I get that PB can’t cope but the feeble-mindedness is still shocking
One in four women report being raped or sexually abused. One in four.
That's approximately 8,437,500
Why don't you give a damn about 8,427,500 of them?
We need to end all abuse of women, not just be hysterical racist shitbags.
“Not just be hysterical racist shitbags”
Bit hard on yourself, but if that’s how you identify, go ahead
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Currently we are paying nearly £100 billion pa in debt interest. I think you are suggesting that it is sustainable to be paying much much more than that. How much is too much?
The government tax take is about £1,000 billion pa. So the interest payment is about 10% of income.
If you have a mortgage, what % of your annual pay does the interest on the mortgage represent? The average UK mortgage is about £200,000. which is much more than 100% of average income. The interest payment of say £10,000 pa is 20-25% of average income of mortgage holders.
So to answer your question, I think £200 billion in debt interest is getting a bit high. Plenty of headroom at the moment.
But you have to invest the extra borrowing for a good return and not just fritter it away in tax cuts and consumer spending. Even that has some economic return in boosting the economy but capital investment should take priority for any extra borrowing.
What public services will you cut to be able to afford another £100bn in debt interest payments?
The comparison with a mortgage is absurd. People without a mortgage either have to rent or they own their home outright. It's a completely different situation to a country servicing a national debt.
The country absolutely can and should borrow to invest.
But investment means things like building infrastructure. New roads etc. Not paying day to day expenditure like salaries and calling it investment.
The country can sustainably and indefinitely run a deficit so long as it is balanced. It should over the cycle be run countercyclically, so don't max it before a downturn. But if the deficit in nominal terms is less than inflation + growth then real debt to GDP falls it doesn't rise.
People keep repeating a myth at the minute that debt servicing costs have gone up due to indexing. It's bollocks. Inflation deflates our debt, indexing isn't a real cost it just means some of our debt isn't deflated but it's not costing us any more in real terms.
There will be another crisis in the future. Another pandemic, another financial crash, China might attempt to invade Taiwan, the US might be taken over by isolationist cowards, could even be an effing asteroid.
I'd rather Britain took advantage of a period between crises to pay off some of the debt accumulated during previous crises and be ready for the next one.
I'd increase taxes, pay for infrastructure investment out of current income, and reduce the national debt.
My dear is that if Britain doesn't do that, then when a future crisis hits, it's unable to borrow to deal with that crisis, and the future crisis is compounded by a sovereign debt crisis.
Yes we should do that, which is why we need to close down our structural deficit.
But cutting infrastructure instead of day-to-day expenditure isn't solving the deficit or the debt problem, its just neglect.
Cut day to day expenditure, there's plenty of valid targets, or put up taxes if you wont, equitably starting with those not paying their way yet not those on draconian tax rates
But the investment has to happen. Cutting investment to current expenditure whether it be expenditure or tax cuts is no way to run a country.
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
100,000 white girls. Minimum
The scale of it is confounding. I get that PB can’t cope but the feeble-mindedness is still shocking
One in four women report being raped or sexually abused. One in four.
That's approximately 8,437,500
Why don't you give a damn about 8,427,500 of them?
We need to end all abuse of women, not just be hysterical racist shitbags.
“Not just be hysterical racist shitbags”
Bit hard on yourself, but if that’s how you identify, go ahead
Lame retort, you're normally better than that.
But then again, this is a sore spot for you. Because if race isn't involved then you're far more concerned with "incels" and blokes who can't get laid than women being abused.
But if race is involved? Oh boy, then its party time.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
Pretty sure the Blair government said similar things about multiculturalism, and that's when we saw stuff like the Life In The UK test being brought in.
We recently had an ESOL course funded at the Jobcentre. It's amazing how difficult it was to get people to show up. OK it was badly targeted in that it was online and a lot of older immigrants don't have the IT skills, or are indeed illiterate, but I would have thought learning the language of your new country was a prerequisite.
You've explained, very well, why an online ESOL course is not the way to go. FE colleges used to do huge numbers of ESOL courses (in the classroom), but the funding has been starved.
@Northern_Al - was it you who posted a link to a three peaks challenge that you're doing? If so, would you mind reposting? I made a mental note to contribute and then entirely lost the link.
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
One of the things that's become increasingly clear is that the policy rush is all coming from the collective megabrains in the Number Ten bunker and they've not tried this stuff on anyone else.
Sometimes, that approach- get a few clever people and their laptops, lock them in a meeting room with some pizza and don't let them out until they have The Best Answer- is the way forward.
But you do risk missing out important details, like this one. There's quite a disconcerting arrogance that assumes that all the other people who looked at this and came up with some version of "this should be done" got it wrong, and Rishi's mates have got it right.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. Northerners are geting some pothole repairs and buses. Lucky northerners.
The target is for it to be 2/3 of the median wage by next October. In a government that overall aspires to disappointing this is a real success story in terms of making work pay and reducing income inequality.
I wouldn't want to criticise any increase in the minimum wage but the 2/3 median wage target seems to represent more the downgrading of other work in the economy, it is being gradually bought down to minimum wage levels in a comparative sense. The marginal tax (Income tax, NI) that you pay for every pound above the minimum wage is quite significant, particularly if you are paying off a student loan.
Whilst purporting to be reducing 'income inequality' the one thing the government are noticeably not doing is adding more taxes to income from wealth. It is creating a structure whereby the gap between the workers and the capitalists increases. It is a contrast to here in Finland where the taxes on wealth are similar to the taxes on employment. Therefore more money is raised to provide things like free university education and council house building, along with many other advantages for the working age population who pay similar levels of tax to people in the UK.
Like politics, all pay is relative. An £11 minimum wage is £22k pa for a 40 hour week. Some routine jobs are not complicated, interact constantly with civilised and polite folk, and have little responsibility (which is not a problem - that's life). However lots of jobs that are difficult, arduous, back breaking, interface with monsters, keep you awake all night, shouty, complex and full of blame pay between say 22 and 28k pa.
A problem will always therefore develop from the fact that you can do OK in much of the UK as a couple on minimum wage (£44k pa) and actually have a nicer life than people earning not much more.
Is this part of the background to the outbreak of strikes from junior professionals and others?
A lot of high skilled, degree level jobs in the public sector, particularly local councils are paying only slightly above minimum wage, say £26k. You are responsible for some quite heavy stuff that can blow up quickly in your face and often there is no support, your manager just complains about you. I've seen this quite a bit, people starting and then saying 'no thanks' after about 3 months. The problem then is that you find out you are on a path to nowhere. If you don't get promoted you may be on £30k after 10 years. Why not just go and drive a van or make people coffee?
Exactly. Another issue is that the £22K minimum wage person will be paying tax and NI on 9-10K of that sum, meaning that the lowest paid FT workers are paying £3K or so in tax/NI.
There is an absurdity about saying that the lowest you can earn for a FT job ('living wage') is an amount which attracts thousands in IT and NI.
And of course absurd that the tax rate on low incomes is so high, while the marginal rate on the richest isn't much more.
The lowest earners were taken out of income tax by the Coalition
And look what happens when the LDs pulled out. Years of fiscal drag and the lowest earners shovelled back into tax.
Some people whose only income is State Pension are now being dragged into Income Tax, as has been mentioned on here several times.
Quite a few OAPs with full state pension and 20-40K savings will already be in it this current year, with the rise in interest rates. It's one thing to have PAYE on the pensions but another to have bank account interest taxable - which means checking and hassle and intimidating letters saying they'll be fined £X plus double charge etc etc.
Not helped by the fact that the DWP is not capable of deducting ICT from the State Pension. So pensioners are being faced with self-assessments or HMRC Simple Assessments, many for the first time in their life. Cue much confusion and anxiety.
How difficult is it for DWP to become capable of doing that?
Every firm in the country is expected to be capable of deducting ICT from employees PAYE, why is DWP singularly inept and incapable of doing so?
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
100,000 white girls. Minimum
The scale of it is confounding. I get that PB can’t cope but the feeble-mindedness is still shocking
One in four women report being raped or sexually abused. One in four.
That's approximately 8,437,500
Why don't you give a damn about 8,427,500 of them?
We need to end all abuse of women, not just be hysterical racist shitbags.
“Not just be hysterical racist shitbags”
Bit hard on yourself, but if that’s how you identify, go ahead
Lame retort, you're normally better than that.
But then again, this is a sore spot for you. Because if race isn't involved then you're far more concerned with "incels" and blokes who can't get laid than women being abused.
But if race is involved? Oh boy, then its party time.
It's just weird that this is what Leon took away from a rather nicely written and personal piece on the immigrant experience and the spirit-sapping impact of the kind of rhetoric Braverman is deploying.
Regarding this guardian article cited above, it is quite an interesting. According to the headline, to say 'multiculturalism has failed' would have been 'beyond the pale even decades ago'. But a decade ago Angela Merkel and David Cameron were both making speeches about how 'multiculturalism has failed'. See links below. It seems to me that the cultural failing that exists is the inability to be able to talk freely about multiculturalism. I would suggest that there is a direct causal link between this and the election of characters like Braverman and the rise of "far right" parties across Europe.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
Please.
Please what? Please don’t post actual facts that make you uncomfortable?
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
Please.
Please what? Please don’t post actual facts that make you uncomfortable?
Please don't be a feeble-minded incel champion who dismisses all concerns women raise about the abuse they suffer unless there's a racial connection?
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
Please.
Please what? Please don’t post actual facts that make you uncomfortable?
Please don't be a feeble-minded incel champion who dismisses all concerns women raise about the abuse they suffer unless there's a racial connection?
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
Please.
Please what? Please don’t post actual facts that make you uncomfortable?
Please don't be a feeble-minded incel champion who dismisses all concerns women raise about the abuse they suffer unless there's a racial connection?
This is just demented. Sorry
You're starting to get self-awareness, that's positive.
When race isn't involved you're far more concerned with 'problems' about blokes being unable to get laid than the millions of women subject to sexual abuse.
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
I only heard the other day that if the 'high speed' hadn't been a factor, a stopping service to Birmingham could have used the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, relieving pressure on the WCML at a fraction of the cost of HS2. This idea is discussed here (worth reading the comments for informed views on both sides): https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2020/04/20-monday-essay-could-the-great.html
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
One of the things that's become increasingly clear is that the policy rush is all coming from the collective megabrains in the Number Ten bunker and they've not tried this stuff on anyone else.
Sometimes, that approach- get a few clever people and their laptops, lock them in a meeting room with some pizza and don't let them out until they have The Best Answer- is the way forward.
But you do risk missing out important details, like this one. There's quite a disconcerting arrogance that assumes that all the other people who looked at this and came up with some version of "this should be done" got it wrong, and Rishi's mates have got it right.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. Northerners are geting some pothole repairs and buses. Lucky northerners.
Given the relatively low car ownership in the north , I'm starting to wonder if this is actually supposed to target southern shires?
That would make sense in terms of core constituency strategy (rather than core voter). Does anyone have a definitive list of "red wall" and equivalent "blue wall" seats?
The target is for it to be 2/3 of the median wage by next October. In a government that overall aspires to disappointing this is a real success story in terms of making work pay and reducing income inequality.
I wouldn't want to criticise any increase in the minimum wage but the 2/3 median wage target seems to represent more the downgrading of other work in the economy, it is being gradually bought down to minimum wage levels in a comparative sense. The marginal tax (Income tax, NI) that you pay for every pound above the minimum wage is quite significant, particularly if you are paying off a student loan.
Whilst purporting to be reducing 'income inequality' the one thing the government are noticeably not doing is adding more taxes to income from wealth. It is creating a structure whereby the gap between the workers and the capitalists increases. It is a contrast to here in Finland where the taxes on wealth are similar to the taxes on employment. Therefore more money is raised to provide things like free university education and council house building, along with many other advantages for the working age population who pay similar levels of tax to people in the UK.
Like politics, all pay is relative. An £11 minimum wage is £22k pa for a 40 hour week. Some routine jobs are not complicated, interact constantly with civilised and polite folk, and have little responsibility (which is not a problem - that's life). However lots of jobs that are difficult, arduous, back breaking, interface with monsters, keep you awake all night, shouty, complex and full of blame pay between say 22 and 28k pa.
A problem will always therefore develop from the fact that you can do OK in much of the UK as a couple on minimum wage (£44k pa) and actually have a nicer life than people earning not much more.
Is this part of the background to the outbreak of strikes from junior professionals and others?
A lot of high skilled, degree level jobs in the public sector, particularly local councils are paying only slightly above minimum wage, say £26k. You are responsible for some quite heavy stuff that can blow up quickly in your face and often there is no support, your manager just complains about you. I've seen this quite a bit, people starting and then saying 'no thanks' after about 3 months. The problem then is that you find out you are on a path to nowhere. If you don't get promoted you may be on £30k after 10 years. Why not just go and drive a van or make people coffee?
For most of the last decade the average public sector worker has sent more than the average private sector worker and had a better pension and generally more flexible working.
The highest skilled earn more in the private sector but for most others the public sector has many advantages
Not really - while the public sector may put more into your pension pay hasn't kept place with inflation for the past 13 years so wages are often 30% less than they would be elsewhere..
In reality the only way anyone can keep their pay reasonable is to change employer every few years..
There are still significant numbers of final salary pension schemes in the public sector, in the private sector they are now virtually non existent
@HYUFD I would suggest that you get elected to a district level (or similar) council. You have a statutory responsibility to run certain services and carry out certain functions in the interests of the electorate. These are very difficult, high stress roles that require a large range of skills and experience, and for which nearly all Council's have multiple unfilled roles at management level. Then you can see what happens if you put out a job ad trying to recruit someone to do the job at £40k which you think represents value for money for the public purse.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
Pretty sure the Blair government said similar things about multiculturalism, and that's when we saw stuff like the Life In The UK test being brought in.
We recently had an ESOL course funded at the Jobcentre. It's amazing how difficult it was to get people to show up. OK it was badly targeted in that it was online and a lot of older immigrants don't have the IT skills, or are indeed illiterate, but I would have thought learning the language of your new country was a prerequisite.
You've explained, very well, why an online ESOL course is not the way to go. FE colleges used to do huge numbers of ESOL courses (in the classroom), but the funding has been starved.
@Northern_Al - was it you who posted a link to a three peaks challenge that you're doing? If so, would you mind reposting? I made a mental note to contribute and then entirely lost the link.
iirc it was @northern_monkey not _Al (does OGH realise we have so many northerners on PB?).
There is a particular quality of sublime, tranquil contentment you get on the Maldives. It’s the closest you get to travel as a really fine opioid. A holiday as heroin
It’s partly to do with the always-pleasant temperature, and free fine booze and food, and luscious lotus-island sea views everywhere, but maybe more to do with the fact you abandon all footwear for the duration. You walk from the restaurant to the scuba boat to the spa to the lovely lunch spot barefoot. The sand never gets hot because it is actually crushed coral excreted by parrotfish (true story)
Never having to put anything on your feet nor worry about that induces a profound zen state like tranq - but without the crouching and the amputations - a state of mind that can only be found in the Maldives
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
Every day I travel past a whole set of works which have already been done for the link-to-Manchester section of HS2. What a waste of time and money if it's cancelled.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
Pretty sure the Blair government said similar things about multiculturalism, and that's when we saw stuff like the Life In The UK test being brought in.
We recently had an ESOL course funded at the Jobcentre. It's amazing how difficult it was to get people to show up. OK it was badly targeted in that it was online and a lot of older immigrants don't have the IT skills, or are indeed illiterate, but I would have thought learning the language of your new country was a prerequisite.
You've explained, very well, why an online ESOL course is not the way to go. FE colleges used to do huge numbers of ESOL courses (in the classroom), but the funding has been starved.
@Northern_Al - was it you who posted a link to a three peaks challenge that you're doing? If so, would you mind reposting? I made a mental note to contribute and then entirely lost the link.
iirc it was @northern_monkey not _Al (does OGH realise we have so many northerners on PB?).
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
I only heard the other day that if the 'high speed' hadn't been a factor, a stopping service to Birmingham could have used the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, relieving pressure on the WCML at a fraction of the cost of HS2. This idea is discussed here (worth reading the comments for informed views on both sides): https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2020/04/20-monday-essay-could-the-great.html
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
Um the Great Central Railway is the Chiltern Line service to Birmingham - once again I think your sources are rather dubious....
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
I only heard the other day that if the 'high speed' hadn't been a factor, a stopping service to Birmingham could have used the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, relieving pressure on the WCML at a fraction of the cost of HS2. This idea is discussed here (worth reading the comments for informed views on both sides): https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2020/04/20-monday-essay-could-the-great.html
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
Um the Great Central Railway is the Chiltern Line service to Birmingham - once again I think your sources are rather dubious....
Only as far as Haddenham (and also the Aylesbury Vale service). Beyond Haddenham, it's ex-GWR metals.
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
I only heard the other day that if the 'high speed' hadn't been a factor, a stopping service to Birmingham could have used the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, relieving pressure on the WCML at a fraction of the cost of HS2. This idea is discussed here (worth reading the comments for informed views on both sides): https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2020/04/20-monday-essay-could-the-great.html
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
It is frequently alleged that the Great Central Railway was built to ‘continental loading gauge’ so that international trains coming through the Channel Tunnel would have been able to use Watkin’s new main line, and this claim is also used to bolster a further myth that a reopened Great Central would be a workable (and cheaper) substitute for HS2. Although the GCR was well-engineered, neither of these claims bear close examination.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
According to wikipedia, she's a Buddhist, her mother's Hindu, her father's Christian, and her husband's Jewish.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
100,000 white girls. Minimum
The scale of it is confounding. I get that PB can’t cope but the feeble-mindedness is still shocking
One in four women report being raped or sexually abused. One in four.
That's approximately 8,437,500
Why don't you give a damn about 8,427,500 of them?
We need to end all abuse of women, not just be hysterical racist shitbags.
“Not just be hysterical racist shitbags”
Bit hard on yourself, but if that’s how you identify, go ahead
Lame retort, you're normally better than that.
But then again, this is a sore spot for you. Because if race isn't involved then you're far more concerned with "incels" and blokes who can't get laid than women being abused.
But if race is involved? Oh boy, then its party time.
It's just weird that this is what Leon took away from a rather nicely written and personal piece on the immigrant experience and the spirit-sapping impact of the kind of rhetoric Braverman is deploying.
I think @Leon's reaction is a bit overblown but the article and certainly the headline are also deliberately provocative. The following paragraph is odd:
"Millions have gone through the pain and bewilderment of displacement. They have experienced welcome and rejection, love and heartbreak, childbirth and growth. They have changed, and made peace with their differences. They have all been, in one vulgar swoop, traduced and humiliated by Braverman’s declaration."
I was under the impression that most migrants wanted to come to the UK? Was that wrong? What is it about saying that multiculturism has failed means that these people have all been "traduced and humiliated"?
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
I only heard the other day that if the 'high speed' hadn't been a factor, a stopping service to Birmingham could have used the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, relieving pressure on the WCML at a fraction of the cost of HS2. This idea is discussed here (worth reading the comments for informed views on both sides): https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2020/04/20-monday-essay-could-the-great.html
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
It is frequently alleged that the Great Central Railway was built to ‘continental loading gauge’ so that international trains coming through the Channel Tunnel would have been able to use Watkin’s new main line, and this claim is also used to bolster a further myth that a reopened Great Central would be a workable (and cheaper) substitute for HS2. Although the GCR was well-engineered, neither of these claims bear close examination.
I can see why people easily pay £10k for a week here. There’s nowhere else like it
It's boring AF though. Very pretty coral atolls, and they have perfected the art of catering to the high end lifestyle porn crowd with a trendy aesthetic and imported luxury consumables and well-trained imported service workers from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh etc. But you have zero interaction with the local culture, it's just a fantasy. A very beautiful, comfortable, and well-executed fantasy.
I can see why people easily pay £10k for a week here. There’s nowhere else like it
Surely it can't top a week at Bognor Butlins....
I confess I’ve never done Bognor NOR Butlins
But I do have a point about the Maldives. These 5 star resorts are insanely pricey. Often £1k a night (and up up up) once you include sea planes etc
But I’ve seen more 5 star resorts than 99.999% of humans. And I can say the Maldives absolutely stand out
If money is not that much of a problem and you just want somewhere to completely chill in sublime comfort - with great scuba and snorkelling and all that - this is where you come. You can see why the Maldives are THE destination (for that) on the planet
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
I only heard the other day that if the 'high speed' hadn't been a factor, a stopping service to Birmingham could have used the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, relieving pressure on the WCML at a fraction of the cost of HS2. This idea is discussed here (worth reading the comments for informed views on both sides): https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2020/04/20-monday-essay-could-the-great.html
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
It is frequently alleged that the Great Central Railway was built to ‘continental loading gauge’ so that international trains coming through the Channel Tunnel would have been able to use Watkin’s new main line, and this claim is also used to bolster a further myth that a reopened Great Central would be a workable (and cheaper) substitute for HS2. Although the GCR was well-engineered, neither of these claims bear close examination.
I can see why people easily pay £10k for a week here. There’s nowhere else like it
It's boring AF though. Very pretty coral atolls, and they have perfected the art of catering to the high end lifestyle porn crowd with a trendy aesthetic and imported luxury consumables and well-trained imported service workers from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh etc. But you have zero interaction with the local culture, it's just a fantasy. A very beautiful, comfortable, and well-executed fantasy.
Oh yes. Absolutely. All true
You never come here for culture or art or any of that
It’s a manufactured dream world. But highly highly seductive
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
To be fair, and for the sake of balance, you could probably also add the line
Brown victims of white perpetrators? Racism still very much alive, the Police are not doing anything about it - and let's bang on about it for decades.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
Pretty sure the Blair government said similar things about multiculturalism, and that's when we saw stuff like the Life In The UK test being brought in.
We recently had an ESOL course funded at the Jobcentre. It's amazing how difficult it was to get people to show up. OK it was badly targeted in that it was online and a lot of older immigrants don't have the IT skills, or are indeed illiterate, but I would have thought learning the language of your new country was a prerequisite.
You've explained, very well, why an online ESOL course is not the way to go. FE colleges used to do huge numbers of ESOL courses (in the classroom), but the funding has been starved.
@Northern_Al - was it you who posted a link to a three peaks challenge that you're doing? If so, would you mind reposting? I made a mental note to contribute and then entirely lost the link.
iirc it was @northern_monkey not _Al (does OGH realise we have so many northerners on PB?).
Part of the appeal of the Maldives is that there is ZERO local culture. No local language (they speak English). No local cuisine. No nothing. The Maldives as a “country” does not really exist
The hotels ARE the Maldives. There’s nothing else to see so there’s no pressure to do anything, look at art, visit old buildings, watch rubbish dancing, it’s just pure chilled out luxury designed for the global 0.001%
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
Obviously Leon hating a Graun article is not earth-shattering news but your comment made me read the piece, which I had previously skipped (so thanks for that).
I'm genuinely interested in what specifically you find so objectionable about the article?
The idea that all immigration is like a pure moral good from which all benefit. Tell that to 100,000 raped underage white girls
Why'd you have to mention the colour? You're just an out and out racist.
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
Because many of the raped girls were specifically targeted for being white by the Muslim grooming gangs. They were called “white sluts”, “white slags”, “white meat”, “kaffir whores” and so on. This a matter of legal record
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
It's your regular focus on race that singles you out as a racist. You should seek help.
Here you go. Remember: 100,000 girls. Minimum
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
The problem is you don't give a damn about victims of sexual abuse.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place. Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares? White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
100,000 white girls. Minimum
The scale of it is confounding. I get that PB can’t cope but the feeble-mindedness is still shocking
One in four women report being raped or sexually abused. One in four.
That's approximately 8,437,500
Why don't you give a damn about 8,427,500 of them?
We need to end all abuse of women, not just be hysterical racist shitbags.
“Not just be hysterical racist shitbags”
Bit hard on yourself, but if that’s how you identify, go ahead
Lame retort, you're normally better than that.
But then again, this is a sore spot for you. Because if race isn't involved then you're far more concerned with "incels" and blokes who can't get laid than women being abused.
But if race is involved? Oh boy, then its party time.
It's just weird that this is what Leon took away from a rather nicely written and personal piece on the immigrant experience and the spirit-sapping impact of the kind of rhetoric Braverman is deploying.
I think @Leon's reaction is a bit overblown but the article and certainly the headline are also deliberately provocative. The following paragraph is odd:
"Millions have gone through the pain and bewilderment of displacement. They have experienced welcome and rejection, love and heartbreak, childbirth and growth. They have changed, and made peace with their differences. They have all been, in one vulgar swoop, traduced and humiliated by Braverman’s declaration."
I was under the impression that most migrants wanted to come to the UK? Was that wrong? What is it about saying that multiculturism has failed means that these people have all been "traduced and humiliated"?
I suppose by saying that multiculturalism had failed she is saying that their presence here is problematic or that they have failed to integrate in some way. Not everyone from a recent immigrant background will feel insulted by Braverman's comments of course, but plenty do. It's a weird thing for Braverman to say as she herself is a Buddhist rather than adopting the state religion of Anglicanism, so obviously believes herself that one of the tenets of multiculturalism, that people should be allowed to retain elements of their own culture rather than being forced to adopt the majority culture in every respect, is correct.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
The target is for it to be 2/3 of the median wage by next October. In a government that overall aspires to disappointing this is a real success story in terms of making work pay and reducing income inequality.
I wouldn't want to criticise any increase in the minimum wage but the 2/3 median wage target seems to represent more the downgrading of other work in the economy, it is being gradually bought down to minimum wage levels in a comparative sense. The marginal tax (Income tax, NI) that you pay for every pound above the minimum wage is quite significant, particularly if you are paying off a student loan.
Whilst purporting to be reducing 'income inequality' the one thing the government are noticeably not doing is adding more taxes to income from wealth. It is creating a structure whereby the gap between the workers and the capitalists increases. It is a contrast to here in Finland where the taxes on wealth are similar to the taxes on employment. Therefore more money is raised to provide things like free university education and council house building, along with many other advantages for the working age population who pay similar levels of tax to people in the UK.
Like politics, all pay is relative. An £11 minimum wage is £22k pa for a 40 hour week. Some routine jobs are not complicated, interact constantly with civilised and polite folk, and have little responsibility (which is not a problem - that's life). However lots of jobs that are difficult, arduous, back breaking, interface with monsters, keep you awake all night, shouty, complex and full of blame pay between say 22 and 28k pa.
A problem will always therefore develop from the fact that you can do OK in much of the UK as a couple on minimum wage (£44k pa) and actually have a nicer life than people earning not much more.
Is this part of the background to the outbreak of strikes from junior professionals and others?
A lot of high skilled, degree level jobs in the public sector, particularly local councils are paying only slightly above minimum wage, say £26k. You are responsible for some quite heavy stuff that can blow up quickly in your face and often there is no support, your manager just complains about you. I've seen this quite a bit, people starting and then saying 'no thanks' after about 3 months. The problem then is that you find out you are on a path to nowhere. If you don't get promoted you may be on £30k after 10 years. Why not just go and drive a van or make people coffee?
For most of the last decade the average public sector worker has sent more than the average private sector worker and had a better pension and generally more flexible working.
The highest skilled earn more in the private sector but for most others the public sector has many advantages
Not really - while the public sector may put more into your pension pay hasn't kept place with inflation for the past 13 years so wages are often 30% less than they would be elsewhere..
In reality the only way anyone can keep their pay reasonable is to change employer every few years..
There are still significant numbers of final salary pension schemes in the public sector, in the private sector they are now virtually non existent
@HYUFD I would suggest that you get elected to a district level (or similar) council. You have a statutory responsibility to run certain services and carry out certain functions in the interests of the electorate. These are very difficult, high stress roles that require a large range of skills and experience, and for which nearly all Council's have multiple unfilled roles at management level. Then you can see what happens if you put out a job ad trying to recruit someone to do the job at £40k which you think represents value for money for the public purse.
Even £40k is still well above the median UK salary and of course any further pay rises for council workers have to be paid for by higher council tax on local residents most of whom are struggling with cost of living themselves
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
Though you did also vote for Blair so not that loyal a Tory even before Sunak
And I'm sure you're excited to have only the purest of heart be the only ones to vote for your party next time then.
Loyal Tories would have voted Conservative in 2019 and still be voting Conservative now.
Loyal Labour would have voted Labour in 2019 and still be voting Labour now.
Everyone else is a swing voter to some degree, including you
Aye, like those who voted PC. Remember? Except there are plenty of people who voted PC then and still do, and LD, SNP, SF, EWG, SG ...
I have never voted Labour at a general election and of course voted for every Tory candidate even on that town council ballot paper too
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I found the Moderna had the worse reaction for me, far worse than Pfizer. 2-3 days of feeling absolutely terrible.
Part of the appeal of the Maldives is that there is ZERO local culture. No local language (they speak English). No local cuisine. No nothing. The Maldives as a “country” does not really exist
The hotels ARE the Maldives. There’s nothing else to see so there’s no pressure to do anything, look at art, visit old buildings, watch rubbish dancing, it’s just pure chilled out luxury designed for the global 0.001%
There is loads of local culture, and you probably wouldn't like it. But you don't see it on the tourist islands as they are deliberately fenced off from the local population. If you go to Male you will see the actual Maldives. The tourist experience there is a seductive but empty fantasy. I enjoyed it for a couple of days but it soon got boring.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
Though you did also vote for Blair so not that loyal a Tory even before Sunak
And I'm sure you're excited to have only the purest of heart be the only ones to vote for your party next time then.
Loyal Tories would have voted Conservative in 2019 and still be voting Conservative now.
Loyal Labour would have voted Labour in 2019 and still be voting Labour now.
Everyone else is a swing voter to some degree, including you
Aye, like those who voted PC. Remember? Except there are plenty of people who voted PC then and still do, and LD, SNP, SF, EWG, SG ...
I have never voted Labour at a general election and of course voted for every Tory candidate even on that town council ballot paper too
But you voted Remain, so you are a liberal (small L) at heart.
The target is for it to be 2/3 of the median wage by next October. In a government that overall aspires to disappointing this is a real success story in terms of making work pay and reducing income inequality.
I wouldn't want to criticise any increase in the minimum wage but the 2/3 median wage target seems to represent more the downgrading of other work in the economy, it is being gradually bought down to minimum wage levels in a comparative sense. The marginal tax (Income tax, NI) that you pay for every pound above the minimum wage is quite significant, particularly if you are paying off a student loan.
Whilst purporting to be reducing 'income inequality' the one thing the government are noticeably not doing is adding more taxes to income from wealth. It is creating a structure whereby the gap between the workers and the capitalists increases. It is a contrast to here in Finland where the taxes on wealth are similar to the taxes on employment. Therefore more money is raised to provide things like free university education and council house building, along with many other advantages for the working age population who pay similar levels of tax to people in the UK.
Like politics, all pay is relative. An £11 minimum wage is £22k pa for a 40 hour week. Some routine jobs are not complicated, interact constantly with civilised and polite folk, and have little responsibility (which is not a problem - that's life). However lots of jobs that are difficult, arduous, back breaking, interface with monsters, keep you awake all night, shouty, complex and full of blame pay between say 22 and 28k pa.
A problem will always therefore develop from the fact that you can do OK in much of the UK as a couple on minimum wage (£44k pa) and actually have a nicer life than people earning not much more.
Is this part of the background to the outbreak of strikes from junior professionals and others?
A lot of high skilled, degree level jobs in the public sector, particularly local councils are paying only slightly above minimum wage, say £26k. You are responsible for some quite heavy stuff that can blow up quickly in your face and often there is no support, your manager just complains about you. I've seen this quite a bit, people starting and then saying 'no thanks' after about 3 months. The problem then is that you find out you are on a path to nowhere. If you don't get promoted you may be on £30k after 10 years. Why not just go and drive a van or make people coffee?
Exactly. Another issue is that the £22K minimum wage person will be paying tax and NI on 9-10K of that sum, meaning that the lowest paid FT workers are paying £3K or so in tax/NI.
There is an absurdity about saying that the lowest you can earn for a FT job ('living wage') is an amount which attracts thousands in IT and NI.
And of course absurd that the tax rate on low incomes is so high, while the marginal rate on the richest isn't much more.
If you also look at fact that peopel on benefits get rent paid, council tax paid, subsidies on utilities , they are not long till much better off than the poor sod working minimum wage having to pay tax/NI etc.
Part of the appeal of the Maldives is that there is ZERO local culture. No local language (they speak English). No local cuisine. No nothing. The Maldives as a “country” does not really exist
The hotels ARE the Maldives. There’s nothing else to see so there’s no pressure to do anything, look at art, visit old buildings, watch rubbish dancing, it’s just pure chilled out luxury designed for the global 0.001%
There is loads of local culture, and you probably wouldn't like it. But you don't see it on the tourist islands as they are deliberately fenced off from the local population. If you go to Male you will see the actual Maldives. The tourist experience there is a seductive but empty fantasy. I enjoyed it for a couple of days but it soon got boring.
I’ve been to male. Indeed stayed there. It is not a functioning culture, to my mind
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
Well, it turns out Karikó is the Private Walker of biochemistry. Lock her up!
After earning her Ph.D. at the University of Szeged, Karikó continued her research and postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of Hungary. In 1985, the lab lost its funding, and she left Hungary for the United States with her husband and 2-year daughter. When immigrating to the US, they smuggled in £900 in a teddy bear, money that they had received from selling their car and buying British pounds on the black market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karikó
Part of the appeal of the Maldives is that there is ZERO local culture. No local language (they speak English). No local cuisine. No nothing. The Maldives as a “country” does not really exist
The hotels ARE the Maldives. There’s nothing else to see so there’s no pressure to do anything, look at art, visit old buildings, watch rubbish dancing, it’s just pure chilled out luxury designed for the global 0.001%
That's all very well Prime Minister, but I'm afraid you do have to go back to Manchester and give your conference speech.
After dishing out dividends which they couldn’t afford but just borrowed they’re now asking us to stump up the money to fix the leaks. The privatization of water was a historic mistake . At least with energy you can switch providers .
And there's no easy way of getting the money back, as the most egregious offenders have sold up to someone else.
Government has two options - force the regulator to be way more strict in reducing how much cash these companies extract for their investors, or nationalise.
The idea that the customers should effectively pay in the capital taken from the company by the asset stripping shareholders in excess dividends is outrageous. The pollution of our seas and rivers amounts to a clear market failure, so action must be taken.
Frankly, consideration should be made as to whether the companies and those individual managers who took these decisions should face charges and whether the companies themselves might thus face large fines.
The target is for it to be 2/3 of the median wage by next October. In a government that overall aspires to disappointing this is a real success story in terms of making work pay and reducing income inequality.
I wouldn't want to criticise any increase in the minimum wage but the 2/3 median wage target seems to represent more the downgrading of other work in the economy, it is being gradually bought down to minimum wage levels in a comparative sense. The marginal tax (Income tax, NI) that you pay for every pound above the minimum wage is quite significant, particularly if you are paying off a student loan.
Whilst purporting to be reducing 'income inequality' the one thing the government are noticeably not doing is adding more taxes to income from wealth. It is creating a structure whereby the gap between the workers and the capitalists increases. It is a contrast to here in Finland where the taxes on wealth are similar to the taxes on employment. Therefore more money is raised to provide things like free university education and council house building, along with many other advantages for the working age population who pay similar levels of tax to people in the UK.
Like politics, all pay is relative. An £11 minimum wage is £22k pa for a 40 hour week. Some routine jobs are not complicated, interact constantly with civilised and polite folk, and have little responsibility (which is not a problem - that's life). However lots of jobs that are difficult, arduous, back breaking, interface with monsters, keep you awake all night, shouty, complex and full of blame pay between say 22 and 28k pa.
A problem will always therefore develop from the fact that you can do OK in much of the UK as a couple on minimum wage (£44k pa) and actually have a nicer life than people earning not much more.
Is this part of the background to the outbreak of strikes from junior professionals and others?
A lot of high skilled, degree level jobs in the public sector, particularly local councils are paying only slightly above minimum wage, say £26k. You are responsible for some quite heavy stuff that can blow up quickly in your face and often there is no support, your manager just complains about you. I've seen this quite a bit, people starting and then saying 'no thanks' after about 3 months. The problem then is that you find out you are on a path to nowhere. If you don't get promoted you may be on £30k after 10 years. Why not just go and drive a van or make people coffee?
For most of the last decade the average public sector worker has sent more than the average private sector worker and had a better pension and generally more flexible working.
The highest skilled earn more in the private sector but for most others the public sector has many advantages
Not really - while the public sector may put more into your pension pay hasn't kept place with inflation for the past 13 years so wages are often 30% less than they would be elsewhere..
In reality the only way anyone can keep their pay reasonable is to change employer every few years..
There are still significant numbers of final salary pension schemes in the public sector, in the private sector they are now virtually non existent
@HYUFD I would suggest that you get elected to a district level (or similar) council. You have a statutory responsibility to run certain services and carry out certain functions in the interests of the electorate. These are very difficult, high stress roles that require a large range of skills and experience, and for which nearly all Council's have multiple unfilled roles at management level. Then you can see what happens if you put out a job ad trying to recruit someone to do the job at £40k which you think represents value for money for the public purse.
Even £40k is still well above the median UK salary and of course any further pay rises for council workers have to be paid for by higher council tax on local residents most of whom are struggling with cost of living themselves
Is it too much to hope that the people running councils at Officer level are above the median in terms of talent and effort?
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
I only heard the other day that if the 'high speed' hadn't been a factor, a stopping service to Birmingham could have used the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, relieving pressure on the WCML at a fraction of the cost of HS2. This idea is discussed here (worth reading the comments for informed views on both sides): https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2020/04/20-monday-essay-could-the-great.html
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
Great Central Railway? At the moment it's a steam heritage line between Loughborough and Leicester North, with no rails beyond that point to the south.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
Its a tax, which is why its levied by HMRC and incorporated within PAYE.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
Though you did also vote for Blair so not that loyal a Tory even before Sunak
And I'm sure you're excited to have only the purest of heart be the only ones to vote for your party next time then.
Loyal Tories would have voted Conservative in 2019 and still be voting Conservative now.
Loyal Labour would have voted Labour in 2019 and still be voting Labour now.
Everyone else is a swing voter to some degree, including you
I assume you vote Tory because they best represent your views. If they no longer did why would you vote for them? They aren't a football team.
Presumably if they moved too far to the right for you, you would vote LD or abstain. If they moved too far to the left for you, you would vote UKIP (or whatever they are called today) or abstain.
You surely wouldn't vote for a party whose views you didn't agree with?
Doesn't that also make you a swing voter as well, albeit that the Tories have never moved far enough for you to flip. The only difference between you and others who have flipped is the degree of movement from the core values of the party to cause you or them to change their vote.
After dishing out dividends which they couldn’t afford but just borrowed they’re now asking us to stump up the money to fix the leaks. The privatization of water was a historic mistake . At least with energy you can switch providers .
And there's no easy way of getting the money back, as the most egregious offenders have sold up to someone else.
Government has two options - force the regulator to be way more strict in reducing how much cash these companies extract for their investors, or nationalise.
The idea that the customers should effectively pay in the capital taken from the company by the asset stripping shareholders in excess dividends is outrageous. The pollution of our seas and rivers amounts to a clear market failure, so action must be taken.
Frankly, consideration should be made as to whether the companies and those individual managers who took these decisions should face charges and whether the companies themselves might thus face large fines.
Macquarie, perhaps the worst offender, is based in Australia, though. And sold up some time back. They should certainly go on a government shitlist for any future contacts.
Who are these 100K people who can get benefit but have no obligation to look for work?
Hunt seems to have just told Radio 4 that it is not people with illness or disability.
Partners of someone who is working full time?
I'm not certain on this but believe since Universal Credit is applied for as a family and not as individuals, if one partner works full time I'm guessing there is no requirement for the other to do so since the partner has already met the obligation to work.
What would Hunt propose? That someone working full time is denied universal credit despite working full time unless their partner does too?
Doesn't matter, since very little of this is going to happen before the next election. And then, it's pretty unlikely that it won't happen at all.
(See also: MOBILE PHONES TO BE BANNED IN SCHOOLS in today's Mail. Which has already melted down to GOVERNMENT TO ISSUE GUIDANCE.)
I don't see why any school wouldn't just insist on pupils handing in their phones at the start of the day and then giving them back at the end quite honestly.
Secure storage and identification, administrative burden etc.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Interesting. Listening to France24 this morning, just like us they have identified a shortfall in new staff for manufacturing industries and similar - estimated at 120k per annum, whilst the existing system delivers ~40k, half of whom go into other industries.
Proposals including making it easier to employ immigrants, or allowing illegal immigrants to work - not currently liked by many French businesses because of the ultra-bureaucracy, and presumably a smidge of xenophobia.
I'd say that if they boosted retirement age to be the same as the normal European country by +3-4 years, that would fix it for the medium term.
Interesting. Listening to France24 this morning, just like us they have identified a shortfall in new staff for manufacturing industries and similar - estimated at 120k per annum, whilst the existing system delivers ~40k, half of whom go into other industries.
Proposals including making it easier to employ immigrants, or allowing illegal immigrants to work - not currently liked by many French businesses because of the ultra-bureaucracy, and presumably a smidge of xenophobia.
I'd say that if they boosted retirement age to be the same as the normal European country by +3-4 years, that would fix it for the medium term.
RIOOOOOTTTTTTT....I mean "mostly peaceful" protest against said measures.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
Though you did also vote for Blair so not that loyal a Tory even before Sunak
And I'm sure you're excited to have only the purest of heart be the only ones to vote for your party next time then.
Loyal Tories would have voted Conservative in 2019 and still be voting Conservative now.
Loyal Labour would have voted Labour in 2019 and still be voting Labour now.
Everyone else is a swing voter to some degree, including you
I assume you vote Tory because they best represent your views. If they no longer did why would you vote for them? They aren't a football team.
Presumably if they moved too far to the right for you, you would vote LD or abstain. If they moved too far to the left for you, you would vote UKIP (or whatever they are called today) or abstain.
You surely wouldn't vote for a party whose views you didn't agree with?
Doesn't that also make you a swing voter as well, albeit that the Tories have never moved far enough for you to flip. The only difference between you and others who have flipped is the degree of movement from the core values of the party to cause you or them to change their vote.
Yes, I've usually voted Tory, not because I'm 'loyal', but because my judgement has been that the country would be better off with them than with the main alternatives. I find the idea of loyalty to a political party odd. I'm loyal to my family and my friends. I suppose if most of my friends and family were Conservative Party members, the idea of loyalty to a party would be less strange.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/02/asian-games-2023-official-hit-by-hammer-throw-broken-leg-stable-condition
An athletics official suffered a broken leg and serious bleeding after being hit by a misthrown hammer in the Asian Games in Hangzhou, but his vital signs are now stable.
On Saturday, Kuwait’s Ali Zankawi lined up for one of his throws in the men’s hammer final at the eastern Chinese city’s packed Olympic stadium. But instead of soaring straight onto the outfield, the hammer flew out sideways and low to the right, smashing into the leg of the sitting technical official.
Looking horrified, Zankawi sprinted over as blood began spurting from the official’s right leg. The official, Huang Qinhua, 62, grimaced and swayed dizzily as Zankawi rushed to check on him, blood shooting out of the wound.
Within seconds Zankawi was using his huge hands and strength to improvise a tourniquet on Huang’s thigh and halt the bleeding. Medical personnel soon took Huang away on a stretcher after applying a tourniquet, then sent him to a nearby hospital...
Rape is wrong no matter who the victim is, or who the perpetrators are.
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
I think one problem we (and America) has when it comes to Government investment is that few people actually understand it. They see money and think it you can take the £70bn cost of HS2 and use it elsewhere when in reality the money doesn't actually exist and just isn't going to be spent.
This is the discourse of an eight year old. You are a child
The rapes were racially aggravated. Yet I am the racist for simply pointing this out
“I was called a barrage of racist names,” Ella said. “They called me a white s**g, a white c***, a white whore, a white b***h and a f****** gori which is their name for a white person.
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/i-raped-rotherham-grooming-gang-18121059
FE colleges used to do huge numbers of ESOL courses (in the classroom), but the funding has been starved.
I am actually living ON a bridge at the moment
I'd rather Britain took advantage of a period between crises to pay off some of the debt accumulated during previous crises and be ready for the next one.
I'd increase taxes, pay for infrastructure investment out of current income, and reduce the national debt.
My dear is that if Britain doesn't do that, then when a future crisis hits, it's unable to borrow to deal with that crisis, and the future crisis is compounded by a sovereign debt crisis.
The irony is that you can't do the east west NPR without HS2 - the costly part of a NPR without HS2 is the same costly reason why HS2 to Manchester is being binned - an underground tunnel into Manchester from the airport is expensive
Even though the French are doing exactly that in Marseille to make the route to Nice easier...
At last, something on which PB can agree upon.
This just tickles you in your funny place as it allows you to further your racism.
White victim of white perpetrators? Shut up and know your place.
Brown victims of brown perpetrators? Who cares?
White victims of brown perpetrators? OMG how horrendous, let's bang on about this for decades.
The scale of it is confounding. I get that PB can’t cope and would rather not think
about it, but the feeble-mindedness is still shocking
It's a prime example of penny wise and pound foolish....
That's approximately 8,437,500
Why don't you give a damn about 8,427,500 of them?
We need to end all abuse of women, not just be hysterical racist shitbags.
Bit hard on yourself, but if that’s how you identify, go ahead
But cutting infrastructure instead of day-to-day expenditure isn't solving the deficit or the debt problem, its just neglect.
Cut day to day expenditure, there's plenty of valid targets, or put up taxes if you wont, equitably starting with those not paying their way yet not those on draconian tax rates
But the investment has to happen. Cutting investment to current expenditure whether it be expenditure or tax cuts is no way to run a country.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations.
It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
But then again, this is a sore spot for you. Because if race isn't involved then you're far more concerned with "incels" and blokes who can't get laid than women being abused.
But if race is involved? Oh boy, then its party time.
Sometimes, that approach- get a few clever people and their laptops, lock them in a meeting room with some pizza and don't let them out until they have The Best Answer- is the way forward.
But you do risk missing out important details, like this one. There's quite a disconcerting arrogance that assumes that all the other people who looked at this and came up with some version of "this should be done" got it wrong, and Rishi's mates have got it right.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. Northerners are geting some pothole repairs and buses. Lucky northerners.
We need to impose massive jail sentences for this shit, starting now
“Second historic wonky pub goes up in flames just miles away from Crooked House remains”
“Being treated as arson”
16th century!
https://x.com/ladbible/status/1708772559091564748?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lf
Beloved trees, beloved pubs, this is our patrimony: enough. Come down HARD
Every firm in the country is expected to be capable of deducting ICT from employees PAYE, why is DWP singularly inept and incapable of doing so?
But a decade ago Angela Merkel and David Cameron were both making speeches about how 'multiculturalism has failed'. See links below.
It seems to me that the cultural failing that exists is the inability to be able to talk freely about multiculturalism.
I would suggest that there is a direct causal link between this and the election of characters like Braverman and the rise of "far right" parties across Europe.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-german-multiculturalism-failed
https://www.france24.com/en/20110205-multiculturalism-has-failed-britain-says-pm-cameron
When race isn't involved you're far more concerned with 'problems' about blokes being unable to get laid than the millions of women subject to sexual abuse.
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
That would make sense in terms of core constituency strategy (rather than core voter). Does anyone have a definitive list of "red wall" and equivalent "blue wall" seats?
It’s partly to do with the always-pleasant temperature, and free fine booze and food, and luscious lotus-island sea views everywhere, but maybe more to do with the fact you abandon all footwear for the duration. You walk from the restaurant to the scuba boat to the spa to the lovely
lunch spot barefoot. The sand never gets hot because it is actually crushed coral excreted by parrotfish (true story)
Never having to put anything on your feet nor worry about that induces a profound zen state like tranq - but without the crouching and the amputations - a state of mind that can only be found in the Maldives
Anyway. Nice
"Millions have gone through the pain and bewilderment of displacement. They have experienced welcome and rejection, love and heartbreak, childbirth and growth. They have changed, and made peace with their differences. They have all been, in one vulgar swoop, traduced and humiliated by Braverman’s declaration."
I was under the impression that most migrants wanted to come to the UK? Was that wrong? What is it about saying that multiculturism has failed means that these people have all been "traduced and humiliated"?
I presume it being Tory Party conference week it will be something like scandal of Tory donor class.
https://news.sky.com/story/seaside-towns-have-always-had-a-reputation-how-margate-became-the-polyamory-capital-of-england-12972188
But I do have a point about the Maldives. These 5 star resorts are insanely pricey. Often £1k a night (and up up up) once you include sea planes etc
But I’ve seen more 5 star resorts than 99.999% of humans. And I can say the Maldives absolutely stand out
If money is not that much of a problem and you just want somewhere to completely chill in sublime comfort - with great scuba and snorkelling and all that - this is where you come. You can see why the Maldives are THE destination (for that) on the planet
You never come here for culture or art or any of that
It’s a manufactured dream world. But highly highly seductive
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
Brown victims of white perpetrators? Racism still very much alive, the Police are not doing anything about it - and let's bang on about it for decades.
The hotels ARE the Maldives. There’s nothing else to see so there’s no pressure to do anything, look at art, visit old buildings, watch rubbish dancing, it’s just pure chilled out luxury designed for the global 0.001%
Why we should give the world's most-hated architectural style a second chance...
https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1708562610285605057
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
After earning her Ph.D. at the University of Szeged, Karikó continued her research and postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of Hungary. In 1985, the lab lost its funding, and she left Hungary for the United States with her husband and 2-year daughter. When immigrating to the US, they smuggled in £900 in a teddy bear, money that they had received from selling their car and buying British pounds on the black market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karikó
Frankly, consideration should be made as to whether the companies and those individual managers who took these decisions should face charges and whether the companies themselves might thus face large fines.
And its cute that you think £25k is "big money".
Presumably if they moved too far to the right for you, you would vote LD or abstain. If they moved too far to the left for you, you would vote UKIP (or whatever they are called today) or abstain.
You surely wouldn't vote for a party whose views you didn't agree with?
Doesn't that also make you a swing voter as well, albeit that the Tories have never moved far enough for you to flip. The only difference between you and others who have flipped is the degree of movement from the core values of the party to cause you or them to change their vote.
But, generally, no. Especially in rainy Britain where all that grey concrete looks so depressing and stains so quickly
In Britain we should build in stone or quality brick or brightly whitewash anything else
They should certainly go on a government shitlist for any future contacts.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Interesting. Listening to France24 this morning, just like us they have identified a shortfall in new staff for manufacturing industries and similar - estimated at 120k per annum, whilst the existing system delivers ~40k, half of whom go into other industries.
Proposals including making it easier to employ immigrants, or allowing illegal immigrants to work - not currently liked by many French businesses because of the ultra-bureaucracy, and presumably a smidge of xenophobia.
I'd say that if they boosted retirement age to be the same as the normal European country by +3-4 years, that would fix it for the medium term.
Unbelievable! The AfD's top candidate for next year's European elections has just been revealed as head of a long-running Chinese influence operation
https://twitter.com/PeterRNeumann/status/1708731621191430504
I suppose if most of my friends and family were Conservative Party members, the idea of loyalty to a party would be less strange.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.