Government bond yields rose after experimental official data indicated that unemployment in Britain was much lower in the first half of the year than first thought, providing what analysts called a “hawkish impetus” for the Bank of England.
Experimental data published in October by the Office for National Statistics indicated that Britain’s unemployment rate had been much lower over the three months to the end of May at 3.5 per cent and the three months to the end of August at 3.8 per cent. Official numbers for those respective periods had suggested that the jobless rate was 4 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively.
Lower unemployment would correlate with higher immigration and would suggest that either GDP should be higher, workers are doing fewer hours or that productivity is even worse.
I heard Timothy Martin on the Today program today. He said that 18% of the working age population of Manchester is on out of work benefits. I have no idea if he was right about that but it seemed extraordinary. We have far too many people deemed not fit for work or, frankly, so poorly committed to work that it makes foreign workers more attractive. FWIW he also claimed it was getting easier to find staff as unemployment grows.
These figures do not pass the sniff test to me but even if they were true I fear that there are too many deemed simply unfit.
I think Fraser Nelson (yes I know I know) last year dug around and put together figures from different datasets to find these sort of eye popping numbers. At the time, it was dismissed, but I don't think he was as far off.
Obviously even Hunt said at the Autumn statement about the rise in those not in work since the pandemic.
Another problem is not just large numbers of people on out of work benefits, it is when it becomes multi-generational and all members of a family. This is known to have terrible outcomes for kids.
There is no provision charging income tax for 2024/25.
This means that there will be another Budget before April and an associated Finance Bill and thus the possibility of changing rates.
Just the 334 pages. Introducing Finance Bills changing things to such an extent every six months sums up the total short-termism in UK politics, and is certainly a contribution to the lack of investment. Who will invest if the rules change every six months?
This has been the complaint of North Sea firms for decades. They changed the tax regulations 4 times in one year a few years ago..
Do you think there's any legs in my idea of making the windfall tax deductable against investments that add to UK capacity?
That already happens - or rather there are deductions against windfall tax profits . There’s an investment allowance for all capex in North Sea assets, which went up to 91% when the EPL was introduced.
In any case most of the large global IOCs don’t pay the windfall tax because of the scale of deductions. It’s mainly payed by foreign (Canadian, Chinese etc) companies with recent investments in mature fields.
Now people took him to task over how he arrived at this figure. But it does seem that he perhaps not as wide of the mark as originally those claimed he was been "owned" by the tw@ttersphere.
The thing about Brexit is that nobody apart from Casino now thinks it was a great idea.
Full blown return to the EU is not at all inevitable, but history (and public opinion) has spoken: it was an essentially a hoax perpetuated on the public.
The long era since the vote is essentially a course in “international trade for slow learners”.
I think brexit was a wonderful idea fucked up by politicians like boris so not only casino
The thing about Brexit, which the dwindling band of true believers refuse to understand, is that Boris-ism was baked into it from the beginning.
No Boris, no Brexit.
It’s one of the explicit reasons I rejected it. Apart from its intrinsic failings, it was being pushed by a pack of lying clowns who would clearly be empowered by a vote in favour.
And lo, some years of governmental debauch later, we are where we are.
What you fail to understand is that Boris was going to be PM whether we voted for Brexit or not. His calculation was simply which would get him there faster.
That was his calculation yes. But the other way would have been a duel with Osborne and I'm not sure he'd have prevailed there.
Boris may have needed a crisis to become PM. Obviously he likes to think of himself as a new Churchill, but in this it's similar.
I wonder how the hypothetical plays out?
Suppose Remain had won. Boris would be in line for a Cabinet job, having had a Good Referendum in defeat. Foreign Office, maybe? Or Mr Making Remain Work.
Thing is, Boris would still be shambolic, lazy and prone to telling convenient lies. Always one indiscretion away from career death.
Would Boris make it to PM without the paranoia of our 2016-9?
The thing about Brexit is that nobody apart from Casino now thinks it was a great idea.
Full blown return to the EU is not at all inevitable, but history (and public opinion) has spoken: it was an essentially a hoax perpetuated on the public.
The long era since the vote is essentially a course in “international trade for slow learners”.
I think brexit was a wonderful idea fucked up by politicians like boris so not only casino
The thing about Brexit, which the dwindling band of true believers refuse to understand, is that Boris-ism was baked into it from the beginning.
No Boris, no Brexit.
It’s one of the explicit reasons I rejected it. Apart from its intrinsic failings, it was being pushed by a pack of lying clowns who would clearly be empowered by a vote in favour.
And lo, some years of governmental debauch later, we are where we are.
What you fail to understand is that Boris was going to be PM whether we voted for Brexit or not. His calculation was simply which would get him there faster.
That was his calculation yes. But the other way would have been a duel with Osborne and I'm not sure he'd have prevailed there.
Boris may have needed a crisis to become PM. Obviously he likes to think of himself as a new Churchill, but in this it's similar.
I wonder how the hypothetical plays out?
Suppose Remain had won. Boris would be in line for a Cabinet job, having had a Good Referendum in defeat. Foreign Office, maybe? Or Mr Making Remain Work.
Thing is, Boris would still be shambolic, lazy and prone to telling convenient lies. Always one indiscretion away from career death.
Would Boris make it to PM without the paranoia of our 2016-9?
Had remain won narrowly, UKIP would surely have become a real challenger to the big two parties. They were polling quite high around referendum time, 16-20%. Maybe it would have been a three way go for a while
Government bond yields rose after experimental official data indicated that unemployment in Britain was much lower in the first half of the year than first thought, providing what analysts called a “hawkish impetus” for the Bank of England.
Experimental data published in October by the Office for National Statistics indicated that Britain’s unemployment rate had been much lower over the three months to the end of May at 3.5 per cent and the three months to the end of August at 3.8 per cent. Official numbers for those respective periods had suggested that the jobless rate was 4 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively.
Lower unemployment would correlate with higher immigration and would suggest that either GDP should be higher, workers are doing fewer hours or that productivity is even worse.
I heard Timothy Martin on the Today program today. He said that 18% of the working age population of Manchester is on out of work benefits. I have no idea if he was right about that but it seemed extraordinary. We have far too many people deemed not fit for work or, frankly, so poorly committed to work that it makes foreign workers more attractive. FWIW he also claimed it was getting easier to find staff as unemployment grows.
These figures do not pass the sniff test to me but even if they were true I fear that there are too many deemed simply unfit.
Unemployment estimates are modelled to improve their precision compared to those based only on responses provided via the Annual Population Survey.
Around 16,500 people aged 16 and over in Manchester were unemployed in the year ending June 2023. This is a rate of 5.5%.
This was a decrease compared with the year ending June 2022 when the unemployment rate was 6.3%.
Across the North West, from the year ending June 2022 to the year ending June 2023, there was a decrease in the unemployment rate from 4.2% to 3.9%.
Year on year, the number of people unemployed in the North West fell from around 151,000 to around 139,000 over the same period.
Unemployment across Great Britain stayed at a similar rate between the year ending June 2022 and the year ending June 2023, going from around 1,260,000 people (3.8%) to around 1,240,000 (3.8%).
By contrast unemployment in Sheffield was 4.0% and Leeds was 3.8%.
Anecdotally it seemed that every other restaurant and bar in Yorkshire had a 'staff wanted' sign in its window earlier this year. There are fewer now but still a significant number.
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
I see The Guardian has named the royals mentioned in the Dutch translation of the book. Surely the BBC has to at some point as well?
It’s kinda funny this because the only people really obsessed with the whiteness of the skin colour of mixed race kids are Asian people, they really want the skin colour to be really white.
Was also my experience when I sired mixed race kids.
Mine, too; although in my case it was half-Thai grandchildren.
Everyone wants to be white. It’s a human universal dating back thousands of years. “Fairness” in women is prized in Sumerian texts
I remember on our wedding day the make up people tried to give my wife some kind of skin bleach, which was ridiculous as (a) she is a stunningly beautiful dark skinned Sri Lankan woman whose skin tone could not be improved upon and (b) presumably if I'd wanted to marry a fair skinned woman I wouldn't have been marrying her. They tried to achieve something similar by overexposing the wedding picture, the result of which is that I look like a ghost. The whole thing is very odd to me as Sri Lankans are quite a good looking bunch and it's odd that they'd want to look more like white people. Our children are a Farrow and Ball colour chart of skin tones. Our eldest is so fair that when we lived in the US (where people seem to be a bit more focused on skin colour than here) some people refused to believe my wife was her mother.
There have been some awkward cases of people criticising mixed race politicians on the assumption they are white of course - skin colour has quite the range outside our very broad classifications.
In a few generations most of the world will hopefully have Brazilianised, with the majority of people having a mixture of genes and there being no need to talk of mixed race anymore because everyone already is.
“Mixed race” is an awful expression, implying as it does that Humans are made up of canine-style breeds. Nobody talks about “mixed hair colour”.
There’s a bit of a battle of ideas between the 90s concept of a future where we’re all colourblind, and the 2010s+ era where we must pay close attention to race so that we can understand prejudice and privilege. I preferred the colourblindness, even if that marks me out as a naive centrist dad. I saw in both my children that they had no conception of racial difference at school until people told them about it.
Yes, I find the modern trend to be both depressing and bizarre in some ways. Yes, we may not have reached a place where there is total colour blindness in action or in the more tricky sense of ingrained attitudes/institutional disparities, but isn't it a good goal at least?
Whereas a hyperfocus on how we apparently differentiate from one another on race, gender, whatever, and who owes the other this or that, should feel guilt or a sense of oppression regardless of the actions and views they personally hold, seems like a bad goal to me. One which is not as helpful at redressing inequalities as what we were doing before.
Isn't there a place where we don't dismiss there may be work to do, without making race in particular the main distinguising factor in our lives? If nothing else it often presupposes people of one 'race' (such as that is even a thing, given as you point out the difficulties there) are supposed to think the same things, since the arguments are always framed in absolutist terms, speaking for everyone of a particular type, or against a type.
I feel l ike we are going backwards on this topic.
The lady who wrote “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race” specifically says that claiming to be ‘colourblind’ is just a way to deny the existence of structural racism
I actually can believe that. But I don't think it requires acceptance of every claim of structural racism, which seems to be all encompassing on pretty much every issue, or that the focus placed on racial minutaie and blame casting of people down the generations, is a good way to combat that structural effect even if people accept it is there.
I can understand the frustration with people who claim that everything’s sorted so what’s the fuss. Same with gender politics. But the problem is what’s the end game? Surely an end game that’s colour blind is better than one where racial difference is everything.
This is another example of American hang ups infecting British culture because we happen to speak the same language and use the same apps.
This is absolutely spot on.
The idea that this is just an imported american hang up is a common delusion that downplays the seriousness of the problems. 'Woke' ideology is actually working against a 'colourblind' future. It seeks to divide people up in to different socially constructed identity groups who then operate in shifting patterns of warring alliances. If western civilisation is to successfully reinvent itself for another few generations there needs to be a more inclusive and positive ideology that replaces all this. Otherwise the west will ultimately just get crushed or enslaved by stronger and more cohesive and self confident civilisations.
'Woke ideology' is entirely an invention of the right. Where is the 'woke ideology' manifesto and who wrote it?
Have you heard of people like Derrick Bell or Kimberlé Crenshaw?
I certainly havent, and suspect only twitterati on the right have and maybe 0.1% of the left or centre. So the idea they drive political thought of the left or centre of politics is all a bit weird.
The point is that there is an ideology and it's very influential even if some of the people who first articulated it are obscure. @Benpointer is wrong to call it an invention of the right.
@darkage commented that "'woke' ideology is actually working against a 'colourblind' future" but this is an explicit tenet of the ideology rather than an unwanted side-effect. There are professors arguing that the idea of colourblindness is merely a "whiteness protection programme”.
Now people took him to task over how he arrived at this figure. But it does seem that he perhaps not as wide of the mark as originally those claimed he was been "owned" by the tw@ttersphere.
A lot of those are not seeking work, or required to. "Unemployed" only counts those who want work and can't get it. If you look at Fraser's graph there are 3.5 million on UC "workless or no work requirements". That will include those judged too ill to work, or not expected to look for work for some other reason, such as being the parents of young children or carers.
Now people took him to task over how he arrived at this figure. But it does seem that he perhaps not as wide of the mark as originally those claimed he was been "owned" by the tw@ttersphere.
We need a need category - the unemployables.
So we would have:
Employed Unemployed - want to be employed Inactive - students, early retirees etc Sick - would work if they could Unemployable
Government bond yields rose after experimental official data indicated that unemployment in Britain was much lower in the first half of the year than first thought, providing what analysts called a “hawkish impetus” for the Bank of England.
Experimental data published in October by the Office for National Statistics indicated that Britain’s unemployment rate had been much lower over the three months to the end of May at 3.5 per cent and the three months to the end of August at 3.8 per cent. Official numbers for those respective periods had suggested that the jobless rate was 4 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively.
Lower unemployment would correlate with higher immigration and would suggest that either GDP should be higher, workers are doing fewer hours or that productivity is even worse.
I heard Timothy Martin on the Today program today. He said that 18% of the working age population of Manchester is on out of work benefits. I have no idea if he was right about that but it seemed extraordinary. We have far too many people deemed not fit for work or, frankly, so poorly committed to work that it makes foreign workers more attractive. FWIW he also claimed it was getting easier to find staff as unemployment grows.
These figures do not pass the sniff test to me but even if they were true I fear that there are too many deemed simply unfit.
Unemployment estimates are modelled to improve their precision compared to those based only on responses provided via the Annual Population Survey.
Around 16,500 people aged 16 and over in Manchester were unemployed in the year ending June 2023. This is a rate of 5.5%.
This was a decrease compared with the year ending June 2022 when the unemployment rate was 6.3%.
Across the North West, from the year ending June 2022 to the year ending June 2023, there was a decrease in the unemployment rate from 4.2% to 3.9%.
Year on year, the number of people unemployed in the North West fell from around 151,000 to around 139,000 over the same period.
Unemployment across Great Britain stayed at a similar rate between the year ending June 2022 and the year ending June 2023, going from around 1,260,000 people (3.8%) to around 1,240,000 (3.8%).
By contrast unemployment in Sheffield was 4.0% and Leeds was 3.8%.
Anecdotally it seemed that every other restaurant and bar in Yorkshire had a 'staff wanted' sign in its window earlier this year. There are fewer now but still a significant number.
That in no way negates the possibility that 18% of Mancunians are on out-of-work benefits. It would simply mean that 14% of Mancunians are not expected to look for work because the are ill, parents or carers
I am one of those who think that Brexit is over, despite some bitter remainers.
What is not over, and never will be, is the demand on our politicians to take advantage of the opportunities and freedoms that they have gained through it. To take an obvious example we should have increased capital allowances to 150% of the investment to drive a boost in investment and, hopefully, productivity. EU rules would have prevented that but there is nothing stopping us from doing it now other than their own incompetence and cowardice.
So we have not done some things we could have done. Maybe Starmer will make a better fist of exploiting Brexit. Now that would be ironic.
Well we had capital allowances for plant and machinery of 130% for a while until recently - yet more flip floping. The rate, the allowances, and the basis of the tax change have zero consistency.
Now people took him to task over how he arrived at this figure. But it does seem that he perhaps not as wide of the mark as originally those claimed he was been "owned" by the tw@ttersphere.
A lot of those are not seeking work, or required to. "Unemployed" only counts those who want work and can't get it. If you look at Fraser's graph there are 3.5 million on UC "workless or no work requirements". That will include those judged too ill to work, or not expected to look for work for some other reason, such as being the parents of young children or carers.
All things being equal you would expect most european nations to have similar levels of too ill/disabled to work...I can see no reason why it wouldnt be the case. however i suspect we have a much higher pecentage than france or germany
There is no provision charging income tax for 2024/25.
This means that there will be another Budget before April and an associated Finance Bill and thus the possibility of changing rates.
Just the 334 pages. Introducing Finance Bills changing things to such an extent every six months sums up the total short-termism in UK politics, and is certainly a contribution to the lack of investment. Who will invest if the rules change every six months?
This has been the complaint of North Sea firms for decades. They changed the tax regulations 4 times in one year a few years ago..
Do you think there's any legs in my idea of making the windfall tax deductable against investments that add to UK capacity?
That already happens - or rather there are deductions against windfall tax profits . There’s an investment allowance for all capex in North Sea assets, which went up to 91% when the EPL was introduced.
In any case most of the large global IOCs don’t pay the windfall tax because of the scale of deductions. It’s mainly payed by foreign (Canadian, Chinese etc) companies with recent investments in mature fields.
Nope. Its mainly paid by smaller and medium sized independent companies who operate primarily in the North Sea. Harbour, Ithaca, Enquest. The sorts of companies you want working here but whovare increasingly moving investment overseas.
And , investment allowance does not encourage more exploration and development as they are Opex not Capex. Which is why drlling has dropped off so much in the North Sea and many companies are leaving entirely - Apache and Taqa being two recent announcements
The thing about Brexit is that nobody apart from Casino now thinks it was a great idea.
Full blown return to the EU is not at all inevitable, but history (and public opinion) has spoken: it was an essentially a hoax perpetuated on the public.
The long era since the vote is essentially a course in “international trade for slow learners”.
That's the rub. Even if we never Rejoin Brexit will be an albatross around the neck of the Tory party. A permanent reminder of their poor decision making and shafting of working age people. Sure in a couple of decades it might have faded, but a long way to go before then.
I was picked up by a very funny and attractive Uber driver in Nice today. She spoke perfect French and her English was passable. She told me she was from Georgia but had come to France with her mother and sister because the men from the caucases are chauvinists particularly her father and her mother didn't want to spend her time in the kitchen. She loved living in France and struck me as more cosmopolitan even than your average Londoner....
.........and then came the coup de grace.......
She told me that Georgia had been trying to join the EU for the last 20 years and they've just been or are about to be accepted and everyone's really excited......
And thankfully, as we're no longer members, they're excited about going somewhere else, rather than our rainy haven.
They didn’t say they they were excited about going anywhere.
Roger, what exactly was the point of that anecdote, specifically the part about Londoners being shit? You really don’t help, you know that don’t you?
I didn't say Londoners were shit. There's a 'perfume' about citizens of everywhere which I really like and this girl had it as many do in the South of France. London has them too too. More than in most places in the UK but it still feels less than the South of france (or Paris for that matter)
Anyone watching Panorama and the cover up of Ian Wares' and Hamish Dawson's sexual assaults of young boys at Edinburgh College and Fettes College? I hated Grammar School (just violence, nothing too hideous) at least I was allowed home every evening.
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Anyone watching Panorama and the cover up of Ian Wares' and Hamish Dawson's sexual assaults of young boys at Edinburgh College and Fettes College? I hated Grammar School (just violence, nothing too hideous) at least I was allowed home every evening.
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Dreadful.
Edinburgh Academy? Long piece in the Graun recently.
There is no provision charging income tax for 2024/25.
This means that there will be another Budget before April and an associated Finance Bill and thus the possibility of changing rates.
Just the 334 pages. Introducing Finance Bills changing things to such an extent every six months sums up the total short-termism in UK politics, and is certainly a contribution to the lack of investment. Who will invest if the rules change every six months?
This has been the complaint of North Sea firms for decades. They changed the tax regulations 4 times in one year a few years ago..
Do you think there's any legs in my idea of making the windfall tax deductable against investments that add to UK capacity?
That already happens - or rather there are deductions against windfall tax profits . There’s an investment allowance for all capex in North Sea assets, which went up to 91% when the EPL was introduced.
In any case most of the large global IOCs don’t pay the windfall tax because of the scale of deductions. It’s mainly payed by foreign (Canadian, Chinese etc) companies with recent investments in mature fields.
Nope. Its mainly paid by smaller and medium sized independent companies who operate primarily in the North Sea. Harbour, Ithaca, Enquest. The sorts of companies you want working here but whovare increasingly moving investment overseas.
And , investment allowance does not encourage more exploration and development as they are Opex not Capex. Which is why drlling has dropped off so much in the North Sea and many companies are leaving entirely - Apache and Taqa being two recent announcements
Sounds like that's something that could be usefully reformed - exploration and development of new hydrocarbon assets is should be classified by the Government as deductable investments. Far worthier of that classification than buying new iPads for everyone.
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
He was, er, wrong. Sometimes happens, however confidently Leon asserts something. I'm not very interested in them, but seems plain to me that they're wildly in love, to the exclusion of most other considerations.
Government bond yields rose after experimental official data indicated that unemployment in Britain was much lower in the first half of the year than first thought, providing what analysts called a “hawkish impetus” for the Bank of England.
Experimental data published in October by the Office for National Statistics indicated that Britain’s unemployment rate had been much lower over the three months to the end of May at 3.5 per cent and the three months to the end of August at 3.8 per cent. Official numbers for those respective periods had suggested that the jobless rate was 4 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively.
Lower unemployment would correlate with higher immigration and would suggest that either GDP should be higher, workers are doing fewer hours or that productivity is even worse.
I heard Timothy Martin on the Today program today. He said that 18% of the working age population of Manchester is on out of work benefits. I have no idea if he was right about that but it seemed extraordinary. We have far too many people deemed not fit for work or, frankly, so poorly committed to work that it makes foreign workers more attractive. FWIW he also claimed it was getting easier to find staff as unemployment grows.
These figures do not pass the sniff test to me but even if they were true I fear that there are too many deemed simply unfit.
Unemployment estimates are modelled to improve their precision compared to those based only on responses provided via the Annual Population Survey.
Around 16,500 people aged 16 and over in Manchester were unemployed in the year ending June 2023. This is a rate of 5.5%.
This was a decrease compared with the year ending June 2022 when the unemployment rate was 6.3%.
Across the North West, from the year ending June 2022 to the year ending June 2023, there was a decrease in the unemployment rate from 4.2% to 3.9%.
Year on year, the number of people unemployed in the North West fell from around 151,000 to around 139,000 over the same period.
Unemployment across Great Britain stayed at a similar rate between the year ending June 2022 and the year ending June 2023, going from around 1,260,000 people (3.8%) to around 1,240,000 (3.8%).
By contrast unemployment in Sheffield was 4.0% and Leeds was 3.8%.
Anecdotally it seemed that every other restaurant and bar in Yorkshire had a 'staff wanted' sign in its window earlier this year. There are fewer now but still a significant number.
That in no way negates the possibility that 18% of Mancunians are on out-of-work benefits. It would simply mean that 14% of Mancunians are not expected to look for work because the are ill, parents or carers
Or, indeed, working but perhaps not on the HMG radar - parents, carers, early and later retirees who do a lot of voluntary work.
There is no provision charging income tax for 2024/25.
This means that there will be another Budget before April and an associated Finance Bill and thus the possibility of changing rates.
Just the 334 pages. Introducing Finance Bills changing things to such an extent every six months sums up the total short-termism in UK politics, and is certainly a contribution to the lack of investment. Who will invest if the rules change every six months?
This has been the complaint of North Sea firms for decades. They changed the tax regulations 4 times in one year a few years ago..
Do you think there's any legs in my idea of making the windfall tax deductable against investments that add to UK capacity?
That already happens - or rather there are deductions against windfall tax profits . There’s an investment allowance for all capex in North Sea assets, which went up to 91% when the EPL was introduced.
In any case most of the large global IOCs don’t pay the windfall tax because of the scale of deductions. It’s mainly payed by foreign (Canadian, Chinese etc) companies with recent investments in mature fields.
Nope. Its mainly paid by smaller and medium sized independent companies who operate primarily in the North Sea. Harbour, Ithaca, Enquest. The sorts of companies you want working here but whovare increasingly moving investment overseas.
And , investment allowance does not encourage more exploration and development as they are Opex not Capex. Which is why drlling has dropped off so much in the North Sea and many companies are leaving entirely - Apache and Taqa being two recent announcements
We would be well advised to look across the North Sea to Norway to see a much more sensible (and long-term) petroleum taxation system.
The thing about Brexit is that nobody apart from Casino now thinks it was a great idea.
Full blown return to the EU is not at all inevitable, but history (and public opinion) has spoken: it was an essentially a hoax perpetuated on the public.
The long era since the vote is essentially a course in “international trade for slow learners”.
That's the rub. Even if we never Rejoin Brexit will be an albatross around the neck of the Tory party. A permanent reminder of their poor decision making and shafting of working age people. Sure in a couple of decades it might have faded, but a long way to go before then.
Both Albatrosses and Condors have got a mention on PB today. The other week in a pub quiz I was convinced that the condor had the biggest wingspan of any bord but it's the albatross.
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
He was, er, wrong. Sometimes happens, however confidently Leon asserts something. I'm not very interested in them, but seems plain to me that they're wildly in love, to the exclusion of most other considerations.
Wasn't it @MarqueeMark who was so sure that the Sussexes had split?
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
Got the impression that the book is generally about the RF - not specifically an instrument of the former Apache pilot and his lady. But I don't have enough interest to be sure. I did wonder if the Harry etc stuff is just newspaper stuff to get more clickbait.
I’m glad someone mentioned Farrow & Ball’s specific matte, chalky finish. It simply can’t be replaced, at least on interiors.
Americans are obsessed with race. Britons with class; the French with sex.
Personally I think one’s socio-economic status (class, if you like) is overwhelmingly the main determinant of how you get on in life. Posh black people beat poor white people, at least in Britain.
Of course, to actually address these inequalities require a much more redistributive tax system, and it is frankly much easier to simply pretend the problem in society is race inequality, and DEI consultants are relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, you can have an accent that everyone looks down on in Britain, and suddenly find in the US that no-one cares about it, because it just sounds like any British accent to them.
Anyone watching Panorama and the cover up of Ian Wares' and Hamish Dawson's sexual assaults of young boys at Edinburgh College and Fettes College? I hated Grammar School (just violence, nothing too hideous) at least I was allowed home every evening.
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Dreadful.
It’s a stretch going from two evil people from many years ago to saying all boarding school ought to be closed…
I’m glad someone mentioned Farrow & Ball’s specific matte, chalky finish. It simply can’t be replaced, at least on interiors.
Americans are obsessed with race. Britons with class; the French with sex.
Personally I think one’s socio-economic status (class, if you like) is overwhelmingly the main determinant of how you get on in life. Posh black people beat poor white people, at least in Britain.
Of course, to actually address these inequalities require a much more redistributive tax system, and it is frankly much easier to simply pretend the problem in society is race inequality, and DEI consultants are relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, you can have an accent that everyone looks down on in Britain, and suddenly find in the US that no-one cares about it, because it just sounds like any British accent to them.
Government bond yields rose after experimental official data indicated that unemployment in Britain was much lower in the first half of the year than first thought, providing what analysts called a “hawkish impetus” for the Bank of England.
Experimental data published in October by the Office for National Statistics indicated that Britain’s unemployment rate had been much lower over the three months to the end of May at 3.5 per cent and the three months to the end of August at 3.8 per cent. Official numbers for those respective periods had suggested that the jobless rate was 4 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively.
Lower unemployment would correlate with higher immigration and would suggest that either GDP should be higher, workers are doing fewer hours or that productivity is even worse.
I heard Timothy Martin on the Today program today. He said that 18% of the working age population of Manchester is on out of work benefits. I have no idea if he was right about that but it seemed extraordinary. We have far too many people deemed not fit for work or, frankly, so poorly committed to work that it makes foreign workers more attractive. FWIW he also claimed it was getting easier to find staff as unemployment grows.
These figures do not pass the sniff test to me but even if they were true I fear that there are too many deemed simply unfit.
Unemployment estimates are modelled to improve their precision compared to those based only on responses provided via the Annual Population Survey.
Around 16,500 people aged 16 and over in Manchester were unemployed in the year ending June 2023. This is a rate of 5.5%.
This was a decrease compared with the year ending June 2022 when the unemployment rate was 6.3%.
Across the North West, from the year ending June 2022 to the year ending June 2023, there was a decrease in the unemployment rate from 4.2% to 3.9%.
Year on year, the number of people unemployed in the North West fell from around 151,000 to around 139,000 over the same period.
Unemployment across Great Britain stayed at a similar rate between the year ending June 2022 and the year ending June 2023, going from around 1,260,000 people (3.8%) to around 1,240,000 (3.8%).
By contrast unemployment in Sheffield was 4.0% and Leeds was 3.8%.
Anecdotally it seemed that every other restaurant and bar in Yorkshire had a 'staff wanted' sign in its window earlier this year. There are fewer now but still a significant number.
That in no way negates the possibility that 18% of Mancunians are on out-of-work benefits. It would simply mean that 14% of Mancunians are not expected to look for work because the are ill, parents or carers
Or, indeed, working but perhaps not on the HMG radar - parents, carers, early and later retirees who do a lot of voluntary work.
Our employment rate is currently 75% or so, so we would expect 25% of the population not working. Clearly some of these would be on benefits of various sorts, particularly in inner cities with their concentrations of various social deprivations.
Our employment rate is pretty middling. Better than some other countries, worse than others.
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
He was, er, wrong. Sometimes happens, however confidently Leon asserts something. I'm not very interested in them, but seems plain to me that they're wildly in love, to the exclusion of most other considerations.
Wasn't it @MarqueeMark who was so sure that the Sussexes had split?
It was. Sometimes Nick Palmer can be, er, wrong, however confidently he asserts something.
Incidentally, I don't actually think Mark was wrong. I am no reader of body language, but I did read a recent story that a public appearance for the couple was 'the first time they had appeared together in public for XX months'. I know they claim to like privacy, but I don't think any functioning couple manages not to go anywhere together for a period of months - effectively only appearing together for public engagements.
Alastair Darling is part of the reason Edinburgh isn't criss-crossed by motorways like Glasgow - he blocked the extension of the M8 to Lothian Road. He also supported the development of the cycle network in the north of the city.
Anyone watching Panorama and the cover up of Ian Wares' and Hamish Dawson's sexual assaults of young boys at Edinburgh College and Fettes College? I hated Grammar School (just violence, nothing too hideous) at least I was allowed home every evening.
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Dreadful.
Edinburgh Academy? Long piece in the Graun recently.
There is no provision charging income tax for 2024/25.
This means that there will be another Budget before April and an associated Finance Bill and thus the possibility of changing rates.
Just the 334 pages. Introducing Finance Bills changing things to such an extent every six months sums up the total short-termism in UK politics, and is certainly a contribution to the lack of investment. Who will invest if the rules change every six months?
This has been the complaint of North Sea firms for decades. They changed the tax regulations 4 times in one year a few years ago..
Do you think there's any legs in my idea of making the windfall tax deductable against investments that add to UK capacity?
That already happens - or rather there are deductions against windfall tax profits . There’s an investment allowance for all capex in North Sea assets, which went up to 91% when the EPL was introduced.
In any case most of the large global IOCs don’t pay the windfall tax because of the scale of deductions. It’s mainly payed by foreign (Canadian, Chinese etc) companies with recent investments in mature fields.
Nope. Its mainly paid by smaller and medium sized independent companies who operate primarily in the North Sea. Harbour, Ithaca, Enquest. The sorts of companies you want working here but whovare increasingly moving investment overseas.
And , investment allowance does not encourage more exploration and development as they are Opex not Capex. Which is why drlling has dropped off so much in the North Sea and many companies are leaving entirely - Apache and Taqa being two recent announcements
We would be well advised to look across the North Sea to Norway to see a much more sensible (and long-term) petroleum taxation system.
Agreed. Something I have argued for very often on here. Their tax rate on production is 72% but there are very large releifs for exploration and development drilling and up to 90% relief on dry holes. This encourages exploration.
And the system has been pretty much unchanged for decades so companies know what return they can expect and make long term investment plans.
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
He was, er, wrong. Sometimes happens, however confidently Leon asserts something. I'm not very interested in them, but seems plain to me that they're wildly in love, to the exclusion of most other considerations.
As I recall it, the claim was made by Marquee Mark rather than Leon.
Alastair Darling is part of the reason Edinburgh isn't criss-crossed by motorways like Glasgow - he blocked the extension of the M8 to Lothian Road. He also supported the development of the cycle network in the north of the city.
I am one of those who think that Brexit is over, despite some bitter remainers.
What is not over, and never will be, is the demand on our politicians to take advantage of the opportunities and freedoms that they have gained through it. To take an obvious example we should have increased capital allowances to 150% of the investment to drive a boost in investment and, hopefully, productivity. EU rules would have prevented that but there is nothing stopping us from doing it now other than their own incompetence and cowardice.
So we have not done some things we could have done. Maybe Starmer will make a better fist of exploiting Brexit. Now that would be ironic.
Well we had capital allowances for plant and machinery of 130% for a while until recently - yet more flip floping. The rate, the allowances, and the basis of the tax change have zero consistency.
I completely agree. And tax rates on companies have been wholly unpredictable. It is not an environment that encourages investment.
Anyone watching Panorama and the cover up of Ian Wares' and Hamish Dawson's sexual assaults of young boys at Edinburgh College and Fettes College? I hated Grammar School (just violence, nothing too hideous) at least I was allowed home every evening.
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Dreadful.
It’s a stretch going from two evil people from many years ago to saying all boarding school ought to be closed…
My cousin went to a prestigious boarding school. No names, but 10 miles from Worcester. It is my auntie's greatest regret that she sent him there, and she has shared why she thinks that way It's probably fine now
Outrageous behaviour was rife in state schools too in the 1960s, 70's and 80's, but at least we were spared footsteps in dormitories and went home for the night.
Alastair Darling is part of the reason Edinburgh isn't criss-crossed by motorways like Glasgow - he blocked the extension of the M8 to Lothian Road. He also supported the development of the cycle network in the north of the city.
(The author, Gerald Posner, granted permission for a long excerpt to be added to that description. Just click on the "read more" in the "Inside Flap" section.)
Apropos the earlier discussion of those who died on the same day, I recall the sobering day in 1992 when both Francis Bacon and Olivier Messiaen died: two giants of twentieth century arts treading the path to final immortality together.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to subpoena GOP billionaire Harlan Crow and @FedSoc chairman Leonard Leo in its investigation into #SCOTUS ethics.
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
Fairytale of New York missed out on number one thanks to the Pet Shop Boy's cover of Always On My Mind in the Christmas 1987 charts.
PSB much better IMHO.
Both Kirsty McColl and the Pogues did better songs than FoNY.
New England was a great song.
Billy Bragg.
Kirsty was a better singer!
Seem to recall a discussion a few weeks ago about Bragg as a great songwriter whose songs often sound better when done by others (Dubstar's version of St Swithin's Day would be my example), but in this case I prefer the rawness of Billy's original.
Alastair Darling is part of the reason Edinburgh isn't criss-crossed by motorways like Glasgow - he blocked the extension of the M8 to Lothian Road. He also supported the development of the cycle network in the north of the city.
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
Fairytale of New York missed out on number one thanks to the Pet Shop Boy's cover of Always On My Mind in the Christmas 1987 charts.
PSB much better IMHO.
Both Kirsty McColl and the Pogues did better songs than FoNY.
New England was a great song.
Billy Bragg.
It is ironic that Kirsty McColl was perhaps best known for songs written by other peopel (Days, FTONY, New England) but one of her best known songs (They Don't Know ABout Us) was sung by someone else.
Fairytale of New York missed out on number one thanks to the Pet Shop Boy's cover of Always On My Mind in the Christmas 1987 charts.
PSB much better IMHO.
Both Kirsty McColl and the Pogues did better songs than FoNY.
Agreed. But it is still probably the best Christmas song of the last 50 years or more.
Massive fan of both Kirsty McColl and The Pogues. Sad day today.
I saw the Pogues live in the mid eighties, backing The Clash at Brixton Academy. They blew me away. It wasn't a vintage Clash line up but one of the best gigs of my life. Great atmosphere.
Alastair Darling is part of the reason Edinburgh isn't criss-crossed by motorways like Glasgow - he blocked the extension of the M8 to Lothian Road. He also supported the development of the cycle network in the north of the city.
Anyone watching Panorama and the cover up of Ian Wares' and Hamish Dawson's sexual assaults of young boys at Edinburgh College and Fettes College? I hated Grammar School (just violence, nothing too hideous) at least I was allowed home every evening.
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Dreadful.
It’s a stretch going from two evil people from many years ago to saying all boarding school ought to be closed…
Indeed, people pay for boarding schools as they produce generally excellent academic results with good extra curricular facilities. Yes there were a few bad egg teachers there who went a bit far in their interest in the pupils but there have been teachers who have sexually assaulted pupils in state schools too, abusers in football clubs, the BBC, the Church, the Scouts, youth clubs and even amongst MPs, we can't shut them all down.
Safeguarding in boarding schools and most of those institutions is also far better than it was in the 1970s
Fairytale of New York missed out on number one thanks to the Pet Shop Boy's cover of Always On My Mind in the Christmas 1987 charts.
PSB much better IMHO.
Both Kirsty McColl and the Pogues did better songs than FoNY.
New England was a great song.
Billy Bragg.
Kirsty was a better singer!
Seem to recall a discussion a few weeks ago about Bragg as a great songwriter whose songs often sound better when done by others (Dubstar's version of St Swithin's Day would be my example), but in this case I prefer the rawness of Billy's original.
I love the rawness of "Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy" but really have not liked anything Bragg has done since. Just too preachy after that.
The thing about Brexit is that nobody apart from Casino now thinks it was a great idea.
Full blown return to the EU is not at all inevitable, but history (and public opinion) has spoken: it was an essentially a hoax perpetuated on the public.
The long era since the vote is essentially a course in “international trade for slow learners”.
Yet only 31% of all UK voters and a mere 9% of 2016 Leave voters want to now rejoin the EU, even barely more than half of 2016 Remain voters now want to rejoin again.
Voters may want a closer trading relationship with Europe, they don't want to be in a Federal EU superstate anymore than they did in 2016
Fairytale of New York missed out on number one thanks to the Pet Shop Boy's cover of Always On My Mind in the Christmas 1987 charts.
PSB much better IMHO.
Both Kirsty McColl and the Pogues did better songs than FoNY.
New England was a great song.
Billy Bragg.
It is ironic that Kirsty McColl was perhaps best known for songs written by other peopel (Days, FTONY, New England) but one of her best known songs (They Don't Know ABout Us) was sung by someone else.
You forgot "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis"
Fairytale of New York missed out on number one thanks to the Pet Shop Boy's cover of Always On My Mind in the Christmas 1987 charts.
PSB much better IMHO.
Both Kirsty McColl and the Pogues did better songs than FoNY.
New England was a great song.
Billy Bragg.
It is ironic that Kirsty McColl was perhaps best known for songs written by other peopel (Days, FTONY, New England) but one of her best known songs (They Don't Know ABout Us) was sung by someone else.
You forgot "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis"
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
Remember too Harry is 5th in line to the throne still, even Archie and Lilibet are 5th and 6th in line to the throne, ie higher than Andrew, Edward, Anne and their children. If, God forbid, anything happened to the Prince and Princess of Wales and their family, then Harry would be heir to the throne and Meghan our next Queen.
They may have given up being working royals, they haven't given up their titles and place in the line of succession.
Having said that if more media outlets name the 2 in the royal race row the Palace will have to sue Scobie to shut him up, the Dutch translator has also now said she copied only the text Scobie gave her
Anyone watching Panorama and the cover up of Ian Wares' and Hamish Dawson's sexual assaults of young boys at Edinburgh College and Fettes College? I hated Grammar School (just violence, nothing too hideous) at least I was allowed home every evening.
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Dreadful.
It’s a stretch going from two evil people from many years ago to saying all boarding school ought to be closed…
Indeed, people pay for boarding schools as they produce generally excellent academic results with good extra curricular facilities. Yes there were a few bad egg teachers there who went a bit far in their interest in the pupils but there have been teachers who have sexually assaulted pupils in state schools too, abusers in football clubs, the BBC, the Church, the Scouts, youth clubs and even amongst MPs, we can't shut them all down.
Safeguarding in boarding schools and most of those institutions is also far better than it was in the 1970s
I thought people paid for boarding schools to get their kids out the house?
That's why I wanted to send the kids to one. Sadly, my wife objected. Apparently 18 months is too young.
It also includes - I was born on Christmas Day by St. Ettiene and Tim Burgess - Melt in the Morning by the Duke Spirit - Just like Christmas by Low - It must be Santa by Bob Dylan - Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses - We're all going to die by Malcolm Middleton - The recurrence of Christmas by Aidan Moffat
... any one of which are also perfectly acceptable answers to 'best Christmas song'.
An indie Christmas to one and all.
Oh, and it also includes "White wine in the sun" by Tim Minchin which someone here (TimS?) pointed me towards a year or two back. I defy anyone with parents and children to listen to that without crying.
Fairytale of New York missed out on number one thanks to the Pet Shop Boy's cover of Always On My Mind in the Christmas 1987 charts.
PSB much better IMHO.
Both Kirsty McColl and the Pogues did better songs than FoNY.
New England was a great song.
Billy Bragg.
It is ironic that Kirsty McColl was perhaps best known for songs written by other peopel (Days, FTONY, New England) but one of her best known songs (They Don't Know ABout Us) was sung by someone else.
I used to really like her cameos on French and Saunders:
Where are all the human beings? Have they been sent to Milton Keynes? They used to live round here but now they're gone For some of us still life moves on
Fairytale of New York missed out on number one thanks to the Pet Shop Boy's cover of Always On My Mind in the Christmas 1987 charts.
PSB much better IMHO.
Both Kirsty McColl and the Pogues did better songs than FoNY.
New England was a great song.
Billy Bragg.
It is ironic that Kirsty McColl was perhaps best known for songs written by other peopel (Days, FTONY, New England) but one of her best known songs (They Don't Know ABout Us) was sung by someone else.
Yes, although I think she sang backing vocals on it. I bought that 7” with my pocket money when I was about 9. Tracy Ullman
Anyone watching Panorama and the cover up of Ian Wares' and Hamish Dawson's sexual assaults of young boys at Edinburgh College and Fettes College? I hated Grammar School (just violence, nothing too hideous) at least I was allowed home every evening.
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Dreadful.
It’s a stretch going from two evil people from many years ago to saying all boarding school ought to be closed…
Indeed, people pay for boarding schools as they produce generally excellent academic results with good extra curricular facilities. Yes there were a few bad egg teachers there who went a bit far in their interest in the pupils but there have been teachers who have sexually assaulted pupils in state schools too, abusers in football clubs, the BBC, the Church, the Scouts, youth clubs and even amongst MPs, we can't shut them all down.
Safeguarding in boarding schools and most of those institutions is also far better than it was in the 1970s
I thought people paid for boarding schools to get their kids out the house?
That's why I wanted to send the kids to one. Sadly, my wife objected. Apparently 18 months is too young.
Well that too, certainly the Victorian and Edwardian aristocracy and upper middle classes sent their children to boarding school as soon as they could ie from 7 to 18 and before that largely kept them in the nursery outside of meal times and family events.
In the army and diplomatic corps of course parents don't have much choice if posted abroad and they want a British education for their children
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
Remember too Harry is 5th in line to the throne still, even Archie and Lilibet are 5th and 6th in line to the throne, ie higher than Andrew, Edward, Anne and their children. If, God forbid, anything happened to the Prince and Princess of Wales and their family, then Harry would be heir to the throne and Meghan our next Queen.
They may have given up being working royals, they haven't given up their titles and place in the line of succession.
Having said that if more media outlets name the 2 in the royal race row the Palace will have to sue Scobie to shut him up, the Dutch translator has also now said she copied only the text Scobie gave her
It is to late to shut anyone up.
The two names are very much in the public domain and main stream media
And as for King Harry and Queen Megan that is a keeper
Comments
Obviously even Hunt said at the Autumn statement about the rise in those not in work since the pandemic.
Another problem is not just large numbers of people on out of work benefits, it is when it becomes multi-generational and all members of a family. This is known to have terrible outcomes for kids.
. There’s an investment allowance for all capex in North Sea assets, which went up to 91% when the EPL was introduced.
Just stop oil types don’t like it: https://neweconomics.org/2023/11/the-windfall-tax-was-supposed-to-rein-in-fossil-fuel-profits-instead-it-has-saved-corporations-billions
In any case most of the large global IOCs don’t pay the windfall tax because of the scale of deductions. It’s mainly payed by foreign (Canadian, Chinese etc) companies with recent investments in mature fields.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/yes-five-million-are-on-out-of-work-benefits-heres-the-proof/
Now people took him to task over how he arrived at this figure. But it does seem that he perhaps not as wide of the mark as originally those claimed he was been "owned" by the tw@ttersphere.
Suppose Remain had won. Boris would be in line for a Cabinet job, having had a Good Referendum in defeat. Foreign Office, maybe? Or Mr Making Remain Work.
Thing is, Boris would still be shambolic, lazy and prone to telling convenient lies. Always one indiscretion away from career death.
Would Boris make it to PM without the paranoia of our 2016-9?
Around 16,500 people aged 16 and over in Manchester were unemployed in the year ending June 2023. This is a rate of 5.5%.
This was a decrease compared with the year ending June 2022 when the unemployment rate was 6.3%.
Across the North West, from the year ending June 2022 to the year ending June 2023, there was a decrease in the unemployment rate from 4.2% to 3.9%.
Year on year, the number of people unemployed in the North West fell from around 151,000 to around 139,000 over the same period.
Unemployment across Great Britain stayed at a similar rate between the year ending June 2022 and the year ending June 2023, going from around 1,260,000 people (3.8%) to around 1,240,000 (3.8%).
https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/labourmarketlocal/E08000003/
By contrast unemployment in Sheffield was 4.0% and Leeds was 3.8%.
Anecdotally it seemed that every other restaurant and bar in Yorkshire had a 'staff wanted' sign in its window earlier this year. There are fewer now but still a significant number.
I was always more of an Elizabethan than a Monarchist, happy to let the institution pass with the late Queen but I guess we’re stuck with it for a bit. So…what sort of insanity has struck the Sussexes and their outriders, particularly this Scobie bloke? You can’t keep recycling the same anecdotes and accusations for the next 40 years to make a living. People are interested in what goes on IN the Royal Family. How does it help you by permanently ensuring your exile from it?
And didn’t someone on here say they were divorcing this time last year? What happened with that?
@darkage commented that "'woke' ideology is actually working against a 'colourblind' future" but this is an explicit tenet of the ideology rather than an unwanted side-effect. There are professors arguing that the idea of colourblindness is merely a "whiteness protection programme”.
So we would have:
Employed
Unemployed - want to be employed
Inactive - students, early retirees etc
Sick - would work if they could
Unemployable
And , investment allowance does not encourage more exploration and development as they are Opex not Capex. Which is why drlling has dropped off so much in the North Sea and many companies are leaving entirely - Apache and Taqa being two recent announcements
The sooner these dark satanic places are consigned to history the better. And to think parents unwittingly paid for their children to be abused.
Dreadful.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/24/jimmy-savile-mark-ii-why-was-an-alleged-child-abuser-able-to-move-from-school-to-school
https://redmolerising.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/alistair-darling-and-the-img/
Our employment rate is pretty middling. Better than some other countries, worse than others.
Incidentally, I don't actually think Mark was wrong. I am no reader of body language, but I did read a recent story that a public appearance for the couple was 'the first time they had appeared together in public for XX months'. I know they claim to like privacy, but I don't think any functioning couple manages not to go anywhere together for a period of months - effectively only appearing together for public engagements.
"Conor McGregor
@TheNotoriousMMA
My baby boy is born! Mammy and baby doing amazing, 8.1lbs of prime Irish double champion beef! ❤️🙏
6:03 PM · Nov 30, 2023
1.4M Views"
https://twitter.com/TheNotoriousMMA/status/1730286347343036917
There zero reason for anyone else to copy it.
And the system has been pretty much unchanged for decades so companies know what return they can expect and make long term investment plans.
Sorry, late to the party.
Outrageous behaviour was rife in state schools too in the 1960s, 70's and 80's, but at least we were spared footsteps in dormitories and went home for the night.
(The author, Gerald Posner, granted permission for a long excerpt to be added to that description. Just click on the "read more" in the "Inside Flap" section.)
Republican senators walked out of the committee room during the vote, per
@courtneybuble
https://twitter.com/bykatiebuehler/status/1730271820824056206
JUST IN: Leonard Leo says in a statement he won't be complying with any congressional subpoena.
https://twitter.com/bykatiebuehler/status/1730283515915227472
Even scofflaw Hunter Biden is prepared to be questioned by Congress. What do they have to hide ?
.
https://news.sky.com/story/palace-considering-all-options-after-charles-and-kate-named-in-archie-skin-colour-row-13019749
To keep the Pet Shop Boys theme going, when it comes to getting a Christmas number one, sometimes you're better off dead.
Massive fan of both Kirsty McColl and The Pogues. Sad day today.
I'll get my coat.
Probably the only alternative to Rishi who might be doing a bit better in the polls but her chance probably went last year
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/whats-the-matter-with-kent-the-city-of-139000-had-24-voter-turnout/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auburn,_Washington
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent,_Washington
In my opinion, when turnout is that low, democracy in such places is threatened. But it looks to me as if such levels are only a little below those in most European Union elections:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_to_the_European_Parliament#Voter_behaviour
The 2019 EU election had far higher turnout, but the level was still slightly below that of the lowest turnout in a modern American presidential election, Truman's suprise victory in 1948.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_United_States_presidential_election
Neil Oliver
@thecoastguy
Smart meters are jabs for your house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDe60CbIagg&t=1s
Safeguarding in boarding schools and most of those institutions is also far better than it was in the 1970s
Voters may want a closer trading relationship with Europe, they don't want to be in a Federal EU superstate anymore than they did in 2016
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/
Compare those results to the turnout in EU elections.
Prediction: The turnout in the next EU election will be below 50 percent -- as usual.
I am increasingly thinking that myself. One advantage is that it stops a leadership challenge on the hapless Sunak.
Wow.
They may have given up being working royals, they haven't given up their titles and place in the line of succession.
Having said that if more media outlets name the 2 in the royal race row the Palace will have to sue Scobie to shut him up, the Dutch translator has also now said she copied only the text Scobie gave her
That's why I wanted to send the kids to one. Sadly, my wife objected. Apparently 18 months is too young.
https://youtu.be/SMNzzrgME6A?si=fX03QkUwKxo5wfAR
It also includes
- I was born on Christmas Day by St. Ettiene and Tim Burgess
- Melt in the Morning by the Duke Spirit
- Just like Christmas by Low
- It must be Santa by Bob Dylan
- Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses
- We're all going to die by Malcolm Middleton
- The recurrence of Christmas by Aidan Moffat
... any one of which are also perfectly acceptable answers to 'best Christmas song'.
An indie Christmas to one and all.
Oh, and it also includes "White wine in the sun" by Tim Minchin which someone here (TimS?) pointed me towards a year or two back. I defy anyone with parents and children to listen to that without crying.
Where are all the human beings?
Have they been sent to Milton Keynes?
They used to live round here but now they're gone
For some of us still life moves on
You can tell he thinks that's being really clever, which is just depressing.
I can't marimba!
In the army and diplomatic corps of course parents don't have much choice if posted abroad and they want a British education for their children
The two names are very much in the public domain and main stream media
And as for King Harry and Queen Megan that is a keeper
"I'm Not Scared" was written by PSB, and they released their own version on "Introspective".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ZjdZDQqpw&t=3s