(Edit: It's not actually new - fieldwork May '23, and 'Brexit' should say 'Reform' - but why spoil a good headline, eh?)
Finally, voting Tory makes you posh again at last and one of the M & S set, now most of the working class Lidl, Asda and Tesco shoppers in the redwall have gone back to Labour.
LDs do best with Waitrose shoppers, so also pretty posh like the Sunak Tories
Tax cuts should be focused (imo) on energy levies, cutting these would be counterinflationary, whereas income tax cuts would be somewhat inflationary (though I still support that if it's the only thing on offer). I would also like to see the windfall tax be made deductable against investment in additional UK energy production capacity.
I would rather National Insurance be cut than income tax, as this would benefit the working age population more, which I feel is fair. National insurance should wither on the vine as time moves forward - it complicates tax unnecessarily.
No we need to reinforce NI as funding more healthcare and more welfare benefits and the state pension not the reverse
Why do you think workers should be taxed twice and non-workers taxed only once ?
As everyone is a worker at some stage and we need to encourage more contributory welfare not discourage it and NI is the way to do it
You could do that even better by increasing income tax and cutting NI.
No you couldn't, we should be ringfencing NI to help fund the state pension, JSA and some healthcare and leave income tax to fund the rest
Your wondrous vision of a country where those who own pay no taxes and those who work pay all the taxes.
Perhaps you read this book when you were younger:
Set in the year 2052, it depicts an authoritarian England divided into two distinct societies: the modern, overpopulated "Conurbs" and the aristocratic, rarefied "County". Crowded city districts and all-pervasive technology make up the Conurbs while manors and rolling countrysides typical of 19th-century England make up the County. The story follows a young Conurban orphan named Rob as he experiences life in both worlds, uncovering truths and choosing sides in the process.
Of course those who own pay taxes, whether council tax, stamp duty, VAT, IHT etc.
However in the vast majority of western nations most welfare and healthcare is funded by insurance contributed to by workers, that is what NI should be doing.
Shire counties being the most Tory doesn't change that
(Edit: It's not actually new - fieldwork May '23, and 'Brexit' should say 'Reform' - but why spoil a good headline, eh?)
Finally, voting Tory makes you posh again at last and one of the M & S set, now most of the working class Lidl, Asda and Tesco shoppers in the redwall have gone back to Labour.
LDs do best with Waitrose shoppers, so also pretty posh like the Sunak Tories
(Edit: It's not actually new - fieldwork May '23, and 'Brexit' should say 'Reform' - but why spoil a good headline, eh?)
Finally, voting Tory makes you posh again at last and one of the M & S set, now most of the working class Lidl, Asda and Tesco shoppers in the redwall have gone back to Labour.
LDs do best with Waitrose shoppers, so also pretty posh like the Sunak Tories
Omg I have found an absolute gem of a backpacker town
Like an island in Thailand in the late 1980s. Kaoh touch on Koh Rong. Only Dirt roads. Lots of Neon. People sleeping on hammocks on the beach. Weird supermarkets with sand floors. Hippychicks from Sweden. Banana pancakes laced with magic mushrooms. An intense sense of louche and drowsy lawlessness. Music everywhere and babies and stray dogs and tattoo parlours and hookers outside a bar called Kin Ky
I thought these places had all disappeared many years ago. Yet not
Oh yes. The real Asia.
That’s my point. Weirdly, it is. Just as real as a new Chinese city full of skyscrapers and pollution or a tiny Japanese town dying out from depopulation or a sleepy Thai village in the rice paddies of isaan
The backpacker town. In some ways more interesting than any of them. The collision of cultures
(Edit: It's not actually new - fieldwork May '23, and 'Brexit' should say 'Reform' - but why spoil a good headline, eh?)
Finally, voting Tory makes you posh again at last and one of the M & S set, now most of the working class Lidl, Asda and Tesco shoppers in the redwall have gone back to Labour.
LDs do best with Waitrose shoppers, so also pretty posh like the Sunak Tories
There's Tories. Then there's M&S Tories.
M&S is common, in the Nicky Haslam tea towel definition of the word.
(Edit: It's not actually new - fieldwork May '23, and 'Brexit' should say 'Reform' - but why spoil a good headline, eh?)
Finally, voting Tory makes you posh again at last and one of the M & S set, now most of the working class Lidl, Asda and Tesco shoppers in the redwall have gone back to Labour.
LDs do best with Waitrose shoppers, so also pretty posh like the Sunak Tories
There's Tories. Then there's M&S Tories.
Then there’s S&M Tories.
They shop at Farmfoods for the delicious humiliation.
Can a backpacker town be “authentic”? They are a bizarre invention of the 1970s. Yet I think they can be authentic. Like an authentic hunter gatherer village in the Amazon or an authentic Italian hill town in Sicily or an authentic aborigine family living in a burned out car. Why not?
If so, this is authentic. Perhaps more than all of those
I mean, most traditions and historic things are fairly recent inventions, even those with roots that do go back a long way, and let's not forget the 70s is 50 years ago now. So I think if one still seems like the original type (or how they are remembered), it coudl be authentic.
I agree. I read that something like 50% of the dishes we regard as absolutely authentic Italian cooking were all invented since WW2
If you have a tiramisu in a little trattoria in a sidestreet in Vicenza it feels absolutely Italian and authentic
Tiramisu was invented in Treviso in 1969
So a classic indochinese backpacker town with its stupid gap year kids from Oslo in pyjamas and its wily local teens working out how to rip them off as the nearest beer bar is infested with perverted old farang men negotiating with bored Khmer girls in hot pants even as drunk chinese gangster families sing karaoke on the beach seems perfectly ancient and legit
Ah, you fell for the old 'Tirmisu wasn't invented until 1969' schtick, eh?
According to the Accademia del Tiramisù (an organisation devoted to ‘transmitting the culture of tiramisù’), the dessert is a good deal older, created by a Treviso madam as an aphrodisiac for her clients — ‘a Viagra from the 19th century’, as they put it. Although this theory isn’t given much credence by food historians, it may explain why the name translates as ‘pick-me-up’ in a local dialect. Prudery over these salacious origins, according to the Accademia, explains why the dessert has only started to appear on respectable menus relatively recently.
Tax cuts should be focused (imo) on energy levies, cutting these would be counterinflationary, whereas income tax cuts would be somewhat inflationary (though I still support that if it's the only thing on offer). I would also like to see the windfall tax be made deductable against investment in additional UK energy production capacity.
I would rather National Insurance be cut than income tax, as this would benefit the working age population more, which I feel is fair. National insurance should wither on the vine as time moves forward - it complicates tax unnecessarily.
No we need to reinforce NI as funding more healthcare and more welfare benefits and the state pension not the reverse
Why do you think workers should be taxed twice and non-workers taxed only once ?
As everyone is a worker at some stage and we need to encourage more contributory welfare not discourage it and NI is the way to do it
You could do that even better by increasing income tax and cutting NI.
No you couldn't, we should be ringfencing NI to help fund the state pension, JSA and some healthcare and leave income tax to fund the rest
Ring fenced taxes are a nice idea but don’t work in practice. Government spending day to day is, in reality, so dynamic (not least due to debt management operations) that you just can’t have “pots” of cash. You radically can’t have them for unpredictable spending like welfare.
I actually think one of the more harmful innovations in the late 90s (done by Labour but planned by the Tories, and universally supported at tbh time) was the move away from cash accounting in Government. Resource based accounting just doesn’t work for Government, and drives bad decisions making for lots of the same reasons it drives good decision making in business. The whole concept of “Annually Managed Expenditure” or AME had to be created precisely because RAB struggled to work in Gvt.
Strip everything back to cash accounting, and look at the Daily Cash flows, and you start to get an idea how complex and variable Gvt finances really are.
Omg I have found an absolute gem of a backpacker town
Like an island in Thailand in the late 1980s. Kaoh touch on Koh Rong. Only Dirt roads. Lots of Neon. People sleeping on hammocks on the beach. Weird supermarkets with sand floors. Hippychicks from Sweden. Banana pancakes laced with magic mushrooms. An intense sense of louche and drowsy lawlessness. Music everywhere and babies and stray dogs and tattoo parlours and hookers outside a bar called Kin Ky
I thought these places had all disappeared many years ago. Yet not
Oh yes. The real Asia.
That’s my point. Weirdly, it is. Just as real as a new Chinese city full of skyscrapers and pollution or a tiny Japanese town dying out from depopulation or a sleepy Thai village in the rice paddies of isaan
The backpacker town. In some ways more interesting than any of them. The collision of cultures
Another authentic global phenomenon is the national-park-edge resort. The shops selling mountain gear, maps or canoeing paraphernalia. The organised tour outlets. The South African owned bar named after a famous explorer. The bus terminal.
Kendal, Moab Utah, Vallon Pont D’Arc, Mestia, Arusha etc
(Edit: It's not actually new - fieldwork May '23, and 'Brexit' should say 'Reform' - but why spoil a good headline, eh?)
Oldies love M&S in my experience.
Looking at the Tesco numbers, can we save the polling companies a lot of effort and just ask their customers at the till? Where goes Tesco, so goes the nation.
In addition, you can guarantee that none of these people will come onto the streets to protest Russia, when Russia starts its winter missile campaign against Ukraine's power and civil infrastructures.
If our government was supporting Russia's atrocities you might see more of that.
We're giving hundreds of millions to Pakistan as it expels refugees to a destitute theocracy.
Well that's foreign aid for you. It's a complex area. But what has this got to do with whether people here hit the streets or not to protest Putin's war on Ukraine?
I'm not aware of anyone in this country protesting about Pakistan's treatment of refugees.
Given the number of people in this country with a Pakistani or Afghan background compared with those of a Palestinian background the difference is blatant.
What I find curious is why you are so unwilling to acknowledge that so much of the anti-Israeli feeling is driven by antisemitism.
Its tolerance of antisemitism which allows it to thrive.
It is sadly in the mix but it's nonsense to make out that antisemitism is the driving force of pro-Palestine sentiment. The reason people do this is to smear and seek to delegitimize those views.
Then please explain why you and so many others are that much more energised by ten thousand dead Gazans than (for example) the hundreds of thousands killed in Syria since 2013, during a civil war that is still ongoing. To say nothing of the various other ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and around the world.
I can only speak for myself. It's a number of things. Bandwidth: You can't be equally and extensively interested in all of the world's conflicts and injustices. Exposure: Israel/Palestine gets reported on (and therefore discussed) more. Salience: Oct 7th and the resulting Gaza carnage is a 'now' event. Politics: Israel/Palestine plays into our Left v Right culture war politics.
If you're honest I think you'll find that all or some of the above are also the reasons you (and many others on your side of this argument) are so 100% uncritically pro Israel that you're blind to Palestinian suffering or more relaxed about it than you'd normally be for a humanitarian disaster you see unfolding on your tv every night.
Bandwidth: that's true, but it doesn't explain why you've picked Israel/Hamas (out of a long list of possibilitiesto focus on so intently. Exposure: that's backwards logic. It gets reported on so much because of the intense focus, not the other way round. And anyway, that argument only works for the average not-particularly-switched-on person: someone as worldly aware as yourself can't get away with it. Salience: stone-cold nonsense; every event was a "now" event at some point. The vast majority of overseas wars don't ever get anywhere near this much attention; Syria certainly didn't. Politics: wow, that's very revealing. I can't imagine that you think this should be a party political issue, so presumably this is an admission that the Left needs to keep its Muslim client vote happy?
If you're honest, I think you'll find that none of your reasons really stack up in practice, your sensitivity to Palestinian suffering is almost entirely confected, and you have a longstanding blind spot towards anything involving Jews that severely colours your attitude to this conflict.
That's a bum rap as regards me. I went to a few party meetings back in Corbyn days and when I did once or twice encounter some oddly intense person muttering about Jeremy being on the sharp end of a 'zionist plot', I gave them a thundery face and either a snort or the silent treatment.
But to pick up on one particular point here. The political angle. It is a left right issue to some extent and I don't see why it shouldn't be. There's a strain in left wing thinking that is anti-western-colonialism and therefore naturally takes the side of groups perceived as being victims of it. The Palestinians fit that bill.
And if people can't see this, it is a film from a protestor outside Starmer's constituency office saying-
"The djinn right? They've gone beyond Shaitan you know he's on the list because his wife's a Zionist you know his wife says, you know, Israel and he'll go and support Israel the little shit"
I’m glad that people like that have no party to represent them. Unfortunately I think that radical Islamists, and the West-hating left, are numerous enough (10-15% of voters) to create a party that could win some seats.
Well they had the Labour Party under Corbyn to represent them a few years ago.
(Edit: It's not actually new - fieldwork May '23, and 'Brexit' should say 'Reform' - but why spoil a good headline, eh?)
Oldies love M&S in my experience.
Looking at the Tesco numbers, can we save the polling companies a lot of effort and just ask their customers at the till? Where goes Tesco, so goes the nation.
That's a good point. Given the poll was conducted in May this year, the poll averages were about 43 Lab, 28 Con, 11 LD, 6 Green, 6 RefUK. So the Tesco numbers a damn near spot-on.
Let's hope someone does this survey again colse to the next GE - we need to know which supermarket reflects national opinion!
Tax cuts should be focused (imo) on energy levies, cutting these would be counterinflationary, whereas income tax cuts would be somewhat inflationary (though I still support that if it's the only thing on offer). I would also like to see the windfall tax be made deductable against investment in additional UK energy production capacity.
I would rather National Insurance be cut than income tax, as this would benefit the working age population more, which I feel is fair. National insurance should wither on the vine as time moves forward - it complicates tax unnecessarily.
No we need to reinforce NI as funding more healthcare and more welfare benefits and the state pension not the reverse
I know that you think that, but I have no idea what purpose you think it would serve.
(Edit: It's not actually new - fieldwork May '23, and 'Brexit' should say 'Reform' - but why spoil a good headline, eh?)
Oldies love M&S in my experience.
Looking at the Tesco numbers, can we save the polling companies a lot of effort and just ask their customers at the till? Where goes Tesco, so goes the nation.
Good idea. For Amazon or Tesco or the BBC or anyone with a high-volume website, the raw result of a single-question opinion poll completed by hundreds of thousands would likely be more accurate than the heavily-weighted 1,000-respondent polls we actually see, which are heavily astroturfed and involve struggling through half an hours' worth of questions.
Tax cuts should be focused (imo) on energy levies, cutting these would be counterinflationary, whereas income tax cuts would be somewhat inflationary (though I still support that if it's the only thing on offer). I would also like to see the windfall tax be made deductable against investment in additional UK energy production capacity.
I would rather National Insurance be cut than income tax, as this would benefit the working age population more, which I feel is fair. National insurance should wither on the vine as time moves forward - it complicates tax unnecessarily.
No we need to reinforce NI as funding more healthcare and more welfare benefits and the state pension not the reverse
Why do you think workers should be taxed twice and non-workers taxed only once ?
As everyone is a worker at some stage and we need to encourage more contributory welfare not discourage it and NI is the way to do it
You could do that even better by increasing income tax and cutting NI.
No you couldn't, we should be ringfencing NI to help fund the state pension, JSA and some healthcare and leave income tax to fund the rest
Ring fenced taxes are a nice idea but don’t work in practice. Government spending day to day is, in reality, so dynamic (not least due to debt management operations) that you just can’t have “pots” of cash. You radically can’t have them for unpredictable spending like welfare.
I actually think one of the more harmful innovations in the late 90s (done by Labour but planned by the Tories, and universally supported at tbh time) was the move away from cash accounting in Government. Resource based accounting just doesn’t work for Government, and drives bad decisions making for lots of the same reasons it drives good decision making in business. The whole concept of “Annually Managed Expenditure” or AME had to be created precisely because RAB struggled to work in Gvt.
Strip everything back to cash accounting, and look at the Daily Cash flows, and you start to get an idea how complex and variable Gvt finances really are.
Insurance works perfectly fine in Germany, France, the US, Canada, Spain and Italy to fund most welfare and healthcare, there is no reason whatsoever it cannot also work here.
I'm old enough to remember when Chancellors wouldn't talk to the media for weeks, possibly months, before any Budget or Autumn Financial Statement - purdah it was called.
Now they're continuously babbling about what they might or might not do.
Raising expectations only for them to be dashed in reality.
When did this change happen ? The Gordon Brown era I suspect.
Thats nothing I am old enough to remember when the actions of Conservative Chancellors were owned by themselves rather than shifting the responsibility onto one of Brown, Clegg or Corbyn.
The Conservatives seem to have abandoned the concept of personal responsibility generally.
Which is especially condemnable as they extent the less fortunate to follow it.
Pensionerism. A party that is dominated by retirees wanting to care for their grandchildren will do anything to protect them, and if that cost is infantilised adults, rentierism, and an obsolete worldview, well that's not their problem.
I'm old enough to remember when Chancellors wouldn't talk to the media for weeks, possibly months, before any Budget or Autumn Financial Statement - purdah it was called.
Now they're continuously babbling about what they might or might not do.
Raising expectations only for them to be dashed in reality.
When did this change happen ? The Gordon Brown era I suspect.
Thats nothing I am old enough to remember when the actions of Conservative Chancellors were owned by themselves rather than shifting the responsibility onto one of Brown, Clegg or Corbyn.
The Conservatives seem to have abandoned the concept of personal responsibility generally.
Which is especially condemnable as they extent the less fortunate to follow it.
Just look at the obsession with IHT, and much worse still the repetitive argument from our resident Tory that all will be well because you can always inherit from mum and dad, either during or after their demise.
I'm old enough to remember when this would have profoundly shocked the Tory voters amongst my family and acquaintance.
All of a part with the abandonment of the balance of payments as something to worry about.
No it wouldn't and clearly you don't know your history, the Tory Party has always been the party of the landed gentry and inherited wealth since the 18th century.
Indeed in the 19th century the Whigs and then the Liberals were more pro free market than the Tories (with many Peelites leaving the Tories for the Liberals in support of Peel's repeal of the Corn Laws which Disraei, Derby and most Tories opposed), only with the rise of Labour and the decline of the Liberals in the early 20th century did the Tories become the main free market party.
Sunak and Hunt have cut inflation and the deficit from what Truss and Kwarteng left too, only that has enabled tax cuts which on the latest reports will be focused on Income Tax and NI before IHT anyway
I'm old enough to remember when Chancellors wouldn't talk to the media for weeks, possibly months, before any Budget or Autumn Financial Statement - purdah it was called.
Now they're continuously babbling about what they might or might not do.
Raising expectations only for them to be dashed in reality.
When did this change happen ? The Gordon Brown era I suspect.
Thats nothing I am old enough to remember when the actions of Conservative Chancellors were owned by themselves rather than shifting the responsibility onto one of Brown, Clegg or Corbyn.
The Conservatives seem to have abandoned the concept of personal responsibility generally.
Which is especially condemnable as they extent the less fortunate to follow it.
Just look at the obsession with IHT, and much worse still the repetitive argument from our resident Tory that all will be well because you can always inherit from mum and dad, either during or after their demise.
I'm old enough to remember when this would have profoundly shocked the Tory voters amongst my family and acquaintance.
All of a part with the abandonment of the balance of payments as something to worry about.
No it wouldn't and clearly you don't know your history, the Tory Party has always been the party of the landed gentry and inherited wealth since the 18th century.
Indeed in the 19th century the Whigs and then the Liberals were more pro free market than the Tories (with many Peelites leaving the Tories for the Liberals in support of Peel's repeal of the Corn Laws which Disraei, Derby and most Tories opposed), only with the rise of Labour and the decline of the Liberals in the early 20th century did the Tories become the main free market party.
Sunak and Hunt have cut inflation and the deficit from what Truss and Kwarteng left too, only that has enabled tax cuts which on the latest reports will be focused on Income Tax and NI before IHT anyway
Right, the party of the 1%.
Pre universal suffrage (right back to pre 1832 Reform Act when women could not vote and nor could over 90% of males) the Tories were the party of the wealthy county landed gentry and the Whigs and then the Liberals the party of wealthy urban merchants and industrialists
Comments
LDs do best with Waitrose shoppers, so also pretty posh like the Sunak Tories
However in the vast majority of western nations most welfare and healthcare is funded by insurance contributed to by workers, that is what NI should be doing.
Shire counties being the most Tory doesn't change that
Massa the incompetent is the outsider on betfair but did better than expected in the first round.
Are the people desperate enough to go for Milei the mad ?
The backpacker town. In some ways more interesting than any of them. The collision of cultures
NEW THREAD
They shop at Farmfoods for the delicious humiliation.
According to the Accademia del Tiramisù (an organisation devoted to ‘transmitting the culture of tiramisù’), the dessert is a good deal older, created by a Treviso madam as an aphrodisiac for her clients — ‘a Viagra from the 19th century’, as they put it. Although this theory isn’t given much credence by food historians, it may explain why the name translates as ‘pick-me-up’ in a local dialect. Prudery over these salacious origins, according to the Accademia, explains why the dessert has only started to appear on respectable menus relatively recently.
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2020/01/history-tiramisu-coffee-infused-italian-classic
I actually think one of the more harmful innovations in the late 90s (done by Labour but planned by the Tories, and universally supported at tbh time) was the move away from cash accounting in Government. Resource based accounting just doesn’t work for Government, and drives bad decisions making for lots of the same reasons it drives good decision making in business. The whole concept of “Annually Managed Expenditure” or AME had to be created precisely because RAB struggled to work in Gvt.
Strip everything back to cash accounting, and look at the Daily Cash flows, and you start to get an idea how complex and variable Gvt finances really are.
Kendal, Moab Utah, Vallon Pont D’Arc, Mestia, Arusha etc
But to pick up on one particular point here. The political angle. It is a left right issue to some extent and I don't see why it shouldn't be. There's a strain in left wing thinking that is anti-western-colonialism and therefore naturally takes the side of groups perceived as being victims of it. The Palestinians fit that bill.
Let's hope someone does this survey again colse to the next GE - we need to know which supermarket reflects national opinion!
That's letting us off rather lightly.