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A CON majority now drops to a 7.6% betting chance – politicalbetting.com
A CON majority now drops to a 7.6% betting chance – politicalbetting.com
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A CON majority now drops to a 7.6% betting chance – politicalbetting.com
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Granted I would get a better return from. the post office but I would still lay a Tory majority at those odds.
Increase in annual debt interest since Truss = £54bn
The extra cost is every year
"Edinburgh Station
Edinburgh will be an integrated high-speed station where passengers can catch HS2 trains and access the high-speed network to the south. HS2 will cut journey times with HS2 trains serving Edinburgh and Glasgow via the West Coast Main Line. A consultation has been launched on proposals for a train stabling facility in the Dumfries and Galloway area to stable, clean and maintain HS2 trains serving Scotland and North West England. When fully operational, this facility would provide 100 skilled and unskilled jobs. Find out more about this consultation, or the proposals themselves."
https://www.hs2.org.uk/the-route/the-north-and-scotland/edinburgh-station/
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
This is one area where Sunak is conning people (amongst many). Saving £90 odd billion but only spending £36 billion on other projects across the country.
Why £90bn?
Was £15-22bn in 2019. After increases in costs and inflation, £36bn in todays prices. Big leap to 90.....
Mainly, though, it strikes me as a personal wish-list - we know Sunak hates smoking, and the new exams in 2033 seems to have been thought up without consultation, but again have the personakl hobby-horse of maths at 18. The near-absence of anything on the NHS or cost of living makes it feel a bit other-worldly.
This whole speech seems as disappointing as a wet fart.
I certainly don't see anything in it worth voting for.
What 'road schemes' are happening? Are we getting a new parallel M6 to add extra capacity? Like a parallel new rail track as proposed but as a motorway? Or other new motorways? What's actually being built?
How about road schemes like for instance the new Western Link Bridge in Warrington that was said to be fully funded in 2019, due for construction in 2021 and still has not yet begun construction? Are these previously-funded schemes being reannounced and if so are they actually going to begin construction before the General Election? Or simply be re-promised like HS2 and these schemes previously, but never actually be built, and simply be cancelled to much less fanfare down the unbuilt road?
Or is it vague BS promises on the never-never? Need I even ask.
£36bn pledged to lots of minor schemes mean those minor schemes can then be left to never be built and none of them will get the publicity that not building HS2 gets.
The real problem is that we have the debt in the first place - essentially because Blair and Brown massively expanded state spending on the back of the pre2008 boom, and when the bust came nobody had a clue how to pay for it, so they just borrowed and borrowed and borrowed.
Thanks to loads of QE interest rates were artificially held down, so everything looked more or less under control.
We've now reached the point where interest rates have normalised, and we're having to borrow the entire debt interest every year. One doesn't have to be a math genius to figure that this is an unsustainable circling of the financial plughole. Just ask the Greeks.
As for how on earth we get out of this mess - goodness only knows. Tax revenue must pretty much maxed out with some of the marginal rates the wrong side of the Laffer curve. Every item of spending is apparently a sacred cow, and half the public sector is already on strike because they feel they aren't paid enough. The trouble with axing CapEx is that it helps this year... Then you've got to find some more to axe next year.
Realistically, the only long term options are - cut government spending on everything by 10% in cash terms, or prune some branches of government spending very severely to spare the others. Neither of those will make the chattering classes very happy.
It's the sort of shit Gordon Brown would do.
@UKLabour
The Tories are furious about the state of Britain today.
Just wait until they find out who's been in power for the last 13 years.
https://x.com/UKLabour/status/1709616765737525632?s=20
(funnily enough I just mistyped that as 'Sunk'
Gordon Brown was also introduced by his wife before his pre election conference speech in 2009. Both are details obsessed managerialists rather than ideologues or charismatic visionaries.
Brown lost of course but Sunak will be encouraged he narrowed the gap by polling day with Cameron and will hope to catch up with Starmer too
I see the Labour social media team has already responded to the Sunak Cigarette Ban
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
The whole HS2 axe thing saves relative peanuts per year. Not enough for a sustainable bribe, even.
But the determination to make it impossible to resurrect HS2 Manc... What's that about? The only parallel I can think of is the way that some government groupies get excited when they think they gave made B***** irreversible.
But yeah. Democratic disgrace. You know, in a democracy, shouldn't people... talk about things a bit?
If maintenance isn't happening, that's neglect.
To do the basics isn't something you get credit for as new investment or levelling up.
Are we meant to believe that Southern railways haven't been maintained as well as the new one built? That Southern roads haven't been maintained? If so, again, that's neglect and the Government gets no credit for that.
This seems odd to me. How useful as an electoral bribe is a promise by serial u Turner Sunak? And hands up who expects that he will be PM in 2026?
£2 billion per year is not going to allow much tax cutting in some sort of giveaway.
To me it looks like salting the earth so a Starmer government cannot reverse it, ditto selling off the land to developers.
Almost a quarter of the HS2 money, unless I’ve misunderstood the background paper, is going on pothole repairs
@steve_hawkes
Labour people are already calling Rishi the Pothole PM. I mean to be fair mending potholes is a good thing but…
Not doing the basics of maintenance, not anything already announced, name any of these "new" transport projects.
Shouldn't be too difficult if he's announced a whole range.
I live in the North, I know what is needed and it isn't Sunak.
When rich countries do dumb things people say 'Be grateful, you could be in the developing world.' But many developing countries are currently building high-speed rail networks
Britain isn't doing that any more.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/640685/Atkins_Model_Development_Report_PFMv3.0-PFMv4.3.pdf
The North isn’t just Manchester.
But its not just Sunak. If Graham Brady (in the North) doesn't get inundated with no confidence letters, the entire Tory Party own this.
The Tories deserve as many MPs in Northern England next election as they got in 'Northern Britain' in 1997.
And you were wrong then, and you are wrong now. Your ex-constituents will see little, if any, money from this, and the regeneration of large areas - and the resultant opportunities - will take much longer, if they happen at all.
But you are right.
Phase 1 costs are estimated to have doubled since 2019 as well to just shy of £100 bilion.
I can envision either. The important thing is that it's basically irrelevant; young people can't afford to get the habit anyway.
If it was sub 90 mins to Manchester for say £75 return then it's not just northerners coming to London but also plenty of southerners and tourists going to Manchester, as well as the one-two day a week in the office hybrid commuting types.
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
I assume Sunak does not personally know anyone who works on a supermarket checkout asking for ID, and the abuse they receive.
Though it might boost holding of photo ID in that age bracket, which is probably not what Tory strategists want.
Less freight on the roads would help ease motorway congestion and help the environment .
Of course Sunak concentrated today on making it seem London centric and just about journey times as he tried to spin cancelling the project as a good thing .
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
https://twitter.com/christianwolmar/status/1709575467546587275
You derive some level of inner relief from a fart, even a wet one.
The salt the earth policy needs to be stopped before the salt is thrown....
I'm not in favour of prohibition. Prohibition doesn't work.
If tobacco is banned people won't stop smoking. It will just boost income for criminals and drug dealers, increase costs on the Police and Courts and slash tax revenues. Its an insane policy.
And we will need to rejig our entire staffing patterns.
Plus, we will need to find several thousand more markers from somewhere.
This needs planning (as in, should already be well underway) now if it is to go live in ten years.
Not made up on the back of an envelope for a rather bad conference speech full of equally stupid lies about transport.
They tried to do previous GCSE and A-level reform in six years just seven years ago and it's been an utter fiasco that has left us without a meaningful exam system. Why do they never learn?
Has this been fully funded? And the time for construction been set aside?
Again, need we ask?
Had a couple of vapes.
Surely that means the policy is working?
According to the Network North map, it stretches as far as Plymouth.
I expect the polls to pick this up over the next 6-12 months. I also don't think it's going to change many votes for Rishi, it may do for a different Tory leader but Rishi is now, IMO, completely damaged goods. Not as bad as Liz the lettuce, but probably worse than Boris.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
Putting it a different way every consistency will get 1 rebuilt school every 11-12 years...
This is the single major factor in our inability to cut taxes and compete for investment vs other nations.
To be honest, it sounds like what they want is the 1980s version of AS courses; two year courses with a considerable (but not complete) overlap with A Level.
But if you want more teaching hours, that's going to cost.
Not happening.
It's just populist crap to demonise young people who do something that only harms themselves.
And that's about the third worst policy announced today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-67006024
A man who says he was forced to sell his house by HS2 said the failed project has "destroyed his life".
Roly Bardsley learned his home in Stanthorne, Cheshire, was affected by the planned route when he received a letter containing a map of the line.
After being denied a compulsory purchase order, the 59-year-old said he had "lost everything".
I did AS maths in first year of doing A level in early 80s. Can't remember anything about it being a two year thing.
A law banning smoking in front of children, or in cars with children etc (if its not illegal already) would make more sense than prohibition.
Appalling day for Britain plc frankly.
I am incandescent.
All these promises are supposedly to be fulfilled only the other side of the election or the one after that, from the same lot whose pre-election promise of "40 new hospitals by 2030" turned out to be a mirage.
https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1259
Meanwhile I noticed this paragraph:
We will upgrade the Energy Coast Line between Carlisle, Workington
and Barrow. This will enable a half-hourly service between Carlisle,
Workington and Whitehaven and accommodate major new freight demands
from the new coal mine.
So no U-turn on the pit.
Jeremy Hunt
@Jeremy_Hunt
·
6h
What a speech by the Prime Minister. I’ve sat through a fair few PM conference speeches now, that was something else.
No messing around, decision after decision to improve our long term future. Courage too - which is why I am proud of my boss today
Also money would go towards resurfacing roads across the country. Electriciation of North Wales rail lines, improved links between Scotland and NI too
Though my instagram feed just seems to be people posting about wine and exotic foreign holidays.
The question is what does boomer Facebook make of it all. I assume they’re all uproariously happy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laphonza_Butler
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.