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Mo money, mo problems? – politicalbetting.com
Mo money, mo problems? – politicalbetting.com
Autumn Statement:* Inheritance tax cuts likely, Treasury looking at cutting 40% rate to 30% or 20%* Rates freeze for small businesses, VAT threshold to rise* BUT benefits squeeze to come* Fiscal headroom over £20bn, compared to £6.5bn in Marchhttps://t.co/fz5LAiQHHp
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Here's the video.
NSFW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUhRKVIjJtw
Presumably they are panicking after the polling following the World’s Greatest Reshuffle
The Tories are staring at either disaster or oblivion. Disaster is therefore the better outcome. It really is that bad
Edit it is 50% of polls. Which is a majority if you round up.
FPT: Speaking as a Bradford University alumnus, this is a great example of how gradual change can be encouraged.
The trend persisting in this country was driven partly by communal conservatism - especially a dresire to preserve what are perceived as traditional values. The NHS / researchers / public health professionals have been working on birth defects and similar questions amongst the community for 2 or 3 decades.
Reappointing election winner Dave to Government confirmed Rishi as the greatest Prime Minister since Gordon Brown.
Now please do the same for FGM!
Someone has smashed this Government's Moral Compass.
It would, however, give Mr Starmer a reason to open up the whole IHT area for reform, which will be needed.
Public debt is floating around 100% of GDP and there is good evidence that anything above that inhibits growth. There are mammoth off book debts in unfunded pension liabilities, the small matter of several hundred billion owed to the BoE, a never ending list of public works needing done, recently aggravated by the RAAC issues, a desperate need for more infrastructure and public services whose productivity post Covid is so awful that they are falling apart.
But yes, tax cuts. That will do it.
It has no idea what the problem is, or how to fix things. Best example recently was Sunak on HS2 recently. He’s crap at politics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Virtually every Tory MP should be bricking it. Extinction awaits, as things stand. And we are now likely less than a year from the GE with absolutely no sign of swing back, indeed it gets worse
This isn’t just a British thing, by the way. Everywhere I go in the world I see enormous post-pandemic socioeconomic strains. Nowhere is thriving (except perhaps a few outliers like Oz, and a couple of lucky European countries - Norway, Iceland)
The whole world is pretty fucked up, and a technological revolution might be the only thing to save us (and the planetary eco-system)
The prime minister and chancellor have taken the surprise decision to consider tax cuts for low and middle earners before the autumn statement on Wednesday, having been handed billions of pounds of additional spending power.
While the move would fuel inflation, Hunt and Sunak could attempt to offset the impact by squeezing welfare payments and making cuts elsewhere.
They are also considering delaying until the spring budget a widely expected reduction in inheritance tax, after accusations that halving the 40 per cent rate would constitute a handout to the rich during a cost-of-living crisis.
The chancellor had been expected to wait until spring to introduce income tax cuts, but improved public finances and worse-than-expected growth forecasts have encouraged him to reconsider amid fears it might not be possible if he waits until next year.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jeremy-hunt-considers-cuts-to-income-tax-and-national-insurance-vdtsp6prl
We are going to get the truly bizarre situation where for IHT purposes one should arrange to die between next Wednesday and the election of a Labour government.
There are several factors that are going to drive this. Firstly, most of the current debt was funded at ridiculously low interest rates over the last decade. As we are still in substantial deficit that debt will need to be rolled over but it will be refinanced at roughly 10x the cost of the current debt. As more and more of the cheap debt reaches maturity the proportion of tax revenues used for debt interest will climb and climb.
Secondly, a significant proportion of current debt is to the BoE and we don’t pay interest on it. As QE is unwound we will have to pay interest on more of it.
Thirdly, we are just not a great credit risk.
Add these together and the idea we have “headroom” for tax cuts is almost morally offensive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAtm-gvlbqE
An IHT cut would also not just benefit them, 1 in 40 UK houses are worth over £1 million and those families would also benefit from an IHT cut. As would those who inherit from non parental relatives or friends or divorced parents and therefore don't get the spousal exemption for their main property and are hit for any inheritance over the £325k threshold
https://www.savills.co.uk/insight-and-opinion/savills-news/339380-0/1-in-40-homes-now-valued-£1-million-or-more--according-to-savills
It makes them look a bunch of chancers.
Ukraine: fucked (war)
America: fucked (drugs, politics, guns)
Turkey: fucked (inflation)
Armenia: fucked (war, poverty)
Georgia: fucked (Russia, poverty)
Spain: fucked (debt, migration)
Portugal: fucked (migration, poverty)
Cambodia: fucked (Covid, corruption)
Greece: quite fucked (poverty, but more varied salads, tourism helping)
Thailand: fucked (Covid, corruption)
Poland: doing OK. Food improving (but Russia!)
Egypt: fucked (over population, eco-crash)
France: quite fucked (migration, politics)
Iceland: doing OK, nice soups
Germany: fucked (economy hollowing, migration)
Montenegro: quite fucked (corruption)
Romania: OMG fucked (poverty, demography)
Italy: fucked (demography, migration)
Sri Lanka: totally fucked (everything)
Maldives: nice, but rainy
Then can target voters in the bluewall and home counties seats the Tories need to secure given many are Remain with an IHT cut in the Spring
The money from down the back of the sofa is essentially a bonus from high inflation. How is the BoE trying to control inflation? By limiting spending power through interest rate hikes. What are the PM and CoE doing now? Increasing spending power through tax cuts.
Government spending is out of control, but public services are on their knees, we can't afford the next round of public sector pay requests, so what is the plan? Tax cuts.
(And edging towards rethinking their societal aversion to immigration.)
Canada style oblivion would be the 16% the Canadian Progressive Conservatives got in 1993 which got them just 2 seats and saw them overtaken as the main party of the right by the Canadian Reform Party who got 19% and 52 seats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Canadian_federal_election
The UK Reform party are up in the polls but still a long way from overtaking the Tories, which really would be an extinction level event
Tory MP Brandon Lewis has taken up his 7th job as an adviser to company part-owned by two sanctioned Russian oligarchs
He will be paid £250k a year for advising just one day a week and is now the highest-paid MP
https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1725600452962623917
https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1725923861588541440
There are more people in the U.S. workforce today than any time in American history. Unemployment has been under 4% for 21 straight months.
There’s more to do, but inflation has come down by 65%, and we now have the lowest inflation rate of any advanced economy in the world.
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1725915542278590656
If that pans out, then the Tories would be in double digit MPs
And both those polls were taken BEFORE the Rwanda setback
It really could happen
Finland has closed its doors to asylum seekers at four crossings, arguing that Vladimir Putin is deliberatively sending them across the border with Russia because it has joined NATO.
The Finnish Border Guard on Friday announced it would erect barriers from midnight local time at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland.
Mail online
America now has by far the lowest life expectancy of any advanced economy in the world! Under the Democrats, more Americans are dying of drug overdoses than ever before! With Joe at the helm, infant mortality is worsening to Global South levels!
For the Tories to win, they have to make sure that those who voted for them in 2019 don't stay at home (which is what they very evidently did in recent by-elections). It's these people that Tories need to attract to the ballot box at the g.e. And I'd have thought that pretending that any fiscal headroom is simply there to be spent, and that cuts to inheritance tax are just what the nation needs appeal to the most right wing among potential Tory voters.
For me it is around a 7-21% Labour win, and for me the outlier events beyond this range at both extremes involve leader changes that go massively well or wrong.
Especially since I wrote to a number of senior figures blowing the whistle on major regulatory failures including the forging of DBS certificates by an OFSTED inspector.
As if they have minds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
So still not an extinction level event and ceasing to be the main party of the right. Unlike say France where Le Pen's National Rally has overtaken centre right Les Republicains as the main party of the right at both presidential and legislative level or Italy where Meloni's populist right Lega Nord has overtaken centre right Forza Italia as the main party of the right on votes and seats (even though the 2 are in Meloni's coalition government) or indeed Canada in 1993 where populist right Reform overtook the centre right Progressive Conservatives on votes and seats (until the 2 eventually merged to form today's Conservative Party of Canada in 1993).
I wonder if Estelle Morris weighed her performance up against the last 13 years of incompetence whether she would re-evaluate or at least mitigate her total unsuitability for the role of Ed. Sec.
@EdwardJDavey
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54m
Today marks 20 years since the repeal of Section 28. Moving the clause to repeal Section 28 remains one of my proudest moments in politics.
I have been on a date, working in gainful employment, keeping up with the cricket, and writing a PB thread header (in my head) all at the same time.
The problem is the department itself which for many years had a culture of failure, mediocrity, arrogance and complete ignorance that has been highly damaging.
And then blame everyone but themselves for it.
They're the Post Office with a wider remit.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20060953
In the last three hours I’ve been posting on PB but also: having a wank (sorry), checking out the crisis at OpenAI, eating a dinner of modern Cambodian cuisine with my new friend chef Jesus Guzman, diving in the sea to look at blue plankton and applying for a visa to Myanmar
If only because the problems themselves are very obvious and easy to understand, even for people of the intellectual calibre of Winnie the Pooh (like Cummings).
The issue was that as ignorant retards their suggested solutions made things worse, and as arrogant fools they wouldn't accept it when this was pointed out,
They were just as bad as the civil servants themselves.
Plus I was compared to Winnie the Pooh when I applied to work for the SIS.
Like Winnie, I would have ended up in numerous honey traps.
Absolutely fucking bonkers. (So they'll probably do it).
James Johnson
@jamesjohnson252
NEW
@JLPartnersPolls
Cabinet Tracker in The Sunday Times
🔵 Rishi Sunak down 9 points since July, now second most-unpopular in Cabinet with the public
🔵 Cameron debuts on -35
🔵 Tom Tugendhat now top
🔵 Cleverly up 6 points
This is the list of ingredients I used the other night, and how I cooked them, but I don’t have a fixed recipe
75g diced smoked pancetta (lardons or chopped up streaky bacon rashers work fine)
2 finely sliced cloves garlic
1 finely chopped small red onion
1 tin of haricot beans (I’d usually use more beans with this amount of sauce, but I’d usually soak dried beans which my Waitrose doesn’t sell)
200g soffritto (I bought a pack from Waitrose, but it’s a really good thing to make a big batch of and freeze in portions so you can use have it ready for stuff like this)
1 tin chopped tomatoes (I used Mutti. Don’t skimp on tinned tomatoes, buy the best)
About 50ml red wine vinegar
A heaped teaspoon of muscovado sugar
Loads of freshly ground black pepper (I apply it liberally at various stages of cooking)
Gently fry and stir the pancetta until it’s released enough fat to cook the garlic and onions, then add them. Turn up heat to medium and fry until onions are softened. Stir the drained beans in and stir fry for a minute. Add soffritto, vinegar and sugar; keep stirring until it starts to boil then add tomatoes. Bring back almost to boil then transfer to preheated oven dish and oven at 170C, covered for thirty minutes, then uncovered for fifteen. Eat and hate tinned “baked” beans forever
Independent Scotland ‘would need own currency’ before joining EU
Critics warn that the government’s own report highlights barriers to entry
An independent Scotland could not join the European Union until it establishes its own new currency, critics say the latest independence prospectus paper confirms.
Angus Robertson, the constitution secretary, suggested that an independent Scotland could join the EU within two to five years of negotiations starting, as he published the seventh paper in the Scottish government’s prospectus series.
The 78-page document claims the nation would likely become a “net contributor” to the EU’s budget. It described plans for checks on goods which are traded across the border between an independent Scotland and England, with Robertson saying there would be the “least friction possible”.
Critics say the paper also admits, though, that Scotland could not rejoin the EU until it had established its own new currency.
The paper reads: “This Scottish government would apply to join the EU as soon as possible after independence whilst continuing to use sterling at the point of application. The process of establishing a Scottish pound would be closely aligned with the process of rejoining the EU.”
Sam Taylor, of the think tank These Islands, said this was an “an oblique way of conceding that an independent Scotland could not join the EU until it had established its own new currency”.
Speaking during a launch event for the paper, at Queen Margaret University in Musselburgh, East Lothian, Robertson confirmed that Scotland’s currency would change after independence to a “Scottish pound”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/independent-scotland-would-need-own-currency-before-joining-eu-c690jcgtk
Still waiting for an answer on the LOLR.
France: not as fucked as people assume. About as fucked as the UK or a little less. Somewhat less fucked than Germany or Italy.
America: doesn’t know how lucky it is. Needs to actually spend some of its wealth on destitution and social issues.
I agree on Poland. But where’s really doing well? Where has 1. Good demographics, 2. Social stability, 3. Growing economy, 4. Ethnic concord?
Only one place. Singapore. Which is boring as hell.
Now SE England - clinging to the hope that it would be freed from the oppressive IHT yoke - may find itself gutted that nothing has changed on Wednesday.
My French neighbours grudgingly accept, when a bit ivré, that macron’s actually pretty good. He’s a Blair, but his relationship with the French people is very Thatcher.
https://twitter.com/jessphillips/status/1725914223883035111
The use of rape as a weapon of war in the attack against Israel must not slip past us with all the horrors coming out of the war. Sexual violence in war zones is not uncommon and women's security is so fragile in peace time that it's the easiest weapon to employ
Cameron’s role elevates Andrew Mitchell, who will take foreign affairs questions in the Commons. When he heard the news that his old boss was returning, Mitchell told colleagues: “I nearly had an orgasm.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-david-cameron-tory-party-general-election-2024-strategy-g6scvl9k2
I was there working but had time for Bagan, the Shwedegon pagoda and the Hill of Nats. I would recommend all of these.
It was the only time that I have worked in a hospital with government secret police spies. Or at least I think so...
ETA:-
Suella said: “So my name is actually Sue-Ellen, because my mum was a fan of Dallas and thought this would be a great name for her daughter. I’ve been plagued ever since.
“But my primary school teachers didn’t like the hyphen. So they came up with Suella on my little tag for my coat and that stuck.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/24717852/suella-braverman-parents-home-secretarys-childhood/
It's a sign of our advancing years that The Sun felt it necessary to explain the set-up of Dallas.
But this should not be the moral priority. The massive priority is that people working FT on minimum wage - the very poorest full time workers - are paying thousands in IT/NI. They should be paying virtually nil.
A US friend tells me it makes sense if you view USA as the modern version of the Roman Empire. The penalties for failing in life are deliberately dire. The USA is powerful, precisely because it is harsh.
At least, I'm aware of her having mentioned it a long time ago.