Horrifying stat from Reddit - on the SNP's new tax bands, if you went to Uni in England and then get a job in Scotland earning over £100,000, your marginal top rate of tax is 78.5%
On topic: Has Trump actually been convicted of insurrection ?
My guess is SCOTUS will rule 6-3 lifting the Colorado judgement but there is a fair chance Kagan might join the conservative justices.
Actually I'm revising that I think it'll be a 7-2 decision in Trump's favour.
One of the commentators in the States said it could be 9-0.
I doubt that but I can see Kagan joining the conservatives. If it is 9-0, it’s because the other two Justices are fully aware that they need to stop this tactic now before it gets too entrenched.
More like 8-0 - Clarence Thomas likely to recuse himself as his wife was urging on those storming the Capitol on Jan 6th.
But the Supreme Court is unlikely to support Trump over the Rule of Law. There are limits.
Plus the Colorado Supreme Court report is a very detailed take down of those making the case for Trump.
Horrifying stat from Reddit - on the SNP's new tax bands, if you went to Uni in England and then get a job in Scotland earning over £100,000, your marginal top rate of tax is 78.5%
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
Ally ourselves with Putin? Really?
It’s deeply unpleasant realpolitik
If Trump effectively abandons NATO who do we want as our ultimate ally? Mighty America, our superpower cousin (and Five Eyes friend) for the last century, or France and Germany and Bulgaria?
Let’s pray we are never forced to choose, but if forced to choose we should go with the USA, every time
Allying with someone as capricious and untrustworthy as Trump would be a terrible idea. To get to the UK, Putin has to pass through the whole of mainland Europe. Obviously and clearly, it is in our national interest to ensure that this is as hard as possible. A Putin-controlled UK makes next to no difference to a US that is prepared to accommodate him.
Let this be a lesson to those who wish to solve fundamentally political issues through legal means. Joylon Maughan take note.
Is there any point at which the Democrats see sense at tell Biden to stand down?
Do you think a contentious, disorganized primary resulting in a victory for Kamala Harris would be a better option for them than running the incumbent president, or do you have a different opinion about what would likely happen if he did stand down?
With inflation down to 3.9%, those holding out for serious double-digit pay rises would be wise to consider an early settlement.
Core inflation down to 5.1% too.
There is a risk of deflation coming down the line.
On any savings I have, if they mature, I am locking in as good a deal as I can.
ASLEF have said they will continue to hold out. They think Labour will yield to their demands. The Junior Doctors have already said they won't settle in England for what they settled for in Scotland because, Tories. But that was a few months back.
Feels to me like the Democrats are maybe destroying democracy in order to save democracy
I seriously wonder if we will see an attempt on Trump’s life if he gets REALLY close to winning. Because, if you honestly think Trump is a new Hitler - and a dictator manque - as many honestly do - then assassination is the lesser crime than letting him seize power
I don't think we're at that point yet. But given how many in the GOP really do defend Trump trying to hold onto power last time, and therefore the risk they and various state houses will go further this time to ensure their guy wins given they don't believe he can lose legitimately, I think the odds are high some Democratic officials somewhere will cross some lines.
That's what happens when the public stops believing in democracy and politicians see loss as existential, reasonably or otherwise. Things break down even on the far less egregious side.
I don't think the ballot decision is really related to that though. There are lots of procedural rules about eligibility and elections, so it's not an outrage in principle for someone to fall foul of that. If a rule says X then thats that even if someone is popular. But I'd be in the camp that says lack of conviction for insurrection will ensure the Supreme Court overturn the decusion pretty sharpish, even were it not conservative controlled.
Perhaps the canny justices will even do that whilst shooting down Trump's appeal in another case that presidents are above the law.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
Abuse at ballet schools - it is shocking but thoroughly unsurprising. The ingredients are all there.
I passing, there’s a reason why ballet makes such an effective theme for horror (Suspiria being one of the greatest horror movies of all time).
In contrast, I just watched the Korean drama Navillera on Netflix, which has the (somewhat improbable) premise of a ballet obsessed septuagenarian retiree learning to dance.
Utterly charming.
My 50 year old daughter does weekly ballet lessons with 80 year olds in their tutus. (Women)
Let this be a lesson to those who wish to solve fundamentally political issues through legal means. Joylon Maughan take note.
Is there any point at which the Democrats see sense at tell Biden to stand down?
I think they’re trying to find a way around the Kamala Harris problem, the problem being that she’s even less popular than Biden.
The suggestion has been that Biden will announce his standing down very late, just before the Convention, and let the DNC bigwigs nominate Newsom as the candidate behind closed doors.
On topic, the really significant thing about the Colorado judgment is that it forces the Supreme Court to rapidly review it - and by extension, Trump's Jan 6th conduct. ...Therefore, to maintain the status quo pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court, we stay our ruling until January 4, 2024 (the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot). If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot..
This might well also accelerate the court's consideration of Trump's (IMO absurd) immunity defence.
We’re going to have this shite wall to wall till the next GE aren’t we? Is there a case that the Tele being bought over by a sports washing, oligarch assisting sheik would see a moral improvement?
On topic: Has Trump actually been convicted of insurrection ?
My guess is SCOTUS will rule 6-3 lifting the Colorado judgement but there is a fair chance Kagan might join the conservative justices.
Actually I'm revising that I think it'll be a 7-2 decision in Trump's favour.
No he’s not been convicted - worse than that, he was impeached for insurrection and was cleared by the Senate of the charges.
Agreed that SC will likely overturn the Colorado judgement.
Yes, in fairness it probably should. The argument for maintaining it would presumably be that banning someone from standing for election can have a lower standard of proof (perhaps just the bslsnce of probabilites) than a court of Senate conviction. But I think we get into dangerous territory if judges can decide who can stand.
Let this be a lesson to those who wish to solve fundamentally political issues through legal means. Joylon Maughan take note.
Is there any point at which the Democrats see sense at tell Biden to stand down?
I think they’re trying to find a way around the Kamala Harris problem, the problem being that she’s even less popular than Biden.
The suggestion has been that Biden will announce his standing down very late, just before the Convention, and let the DNC bigwigs nominate Newsom as the candidate behind closed doors.
Why is Harris not popular. She does not strike me as the most dynamic of go getters but she seems relatively inoffensive as well.
Abuse at ballet schools - it is shocking but thoroughly unsurprising. The ingredients are all there.
I passing, there’s a reason why ballet makes such an effective theme for horror (Suspiria being one of the greatest horror movies of all time).
In contrast, I just watched the Korean drama Navillera on Netflix, which has the (somewhat improbable) premise of a ballet obsessed septuagenarian retiree learning to dance.
Utterly charming.
My 50 year old daughter does weekly ballet lessons with 80 year olds in their tutus. (Women)
Somewhat improbable as the basis for a compelling drama, I meant. But it's really good.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Or he will extract more money from mainland Europe to fund NATO. His big beef when in office seemed to be all the $ US spent protecting Europe when Europe ponied up very little cash in comparison.
On topic, the really significant thing about the Colorado judgment is that it forces the Supreme Court to rapidly review it - and by extension, Trump's Jan 6th conduct. ...Therefore, to maintain the status quo pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court, we stay our ruling until January 4, 2024 (the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot). If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot..
This might well also accelerate the court's consideration of Trump's (IMO absurd) immunity defence.
I could almost believe that's why they ruled this way, which seems to have caught most observers by surprise.
Trump is not guaranteed to be convicted in any of the cases but obviously he doesn't want to take any chances and his legal strategy has openly been to delay everything by any means necessary no matter how ludicrous, so he can win the election, which would see most cases drop and neuter the rest. It could work.
An amenable judge has ensured that in the simplest case, and endless motions and appeals he hopes will achieve it in most of the others (the Georgia case was already starting too late).
Perhaps forcing a decision on some of his delaying appeals was worth the Colorado court making a decision they can be confident will be overturned.
They can slide on that though if the state party are allowed to shift their primary or can switch to a caucus or something.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
If there’s an Autumn UK election, this puzzle will land itself almost immediately on the incoming government. This will be a huge challenge, potentially defining the course of the administration.
I hope the civil service are doing the hard yards, doing serious scenario planning and that the LoO is getting fully briefed.
We’re going to have this shite wall to wall till the next GE aren’t we? Is there a case that the Tele being bought over by a sports washing, oligarch assisting sheik would see a moral improvement?
It is cheap politics, certainly, and it won't work. Whoever does the Tories comms on social media wants sacking as theirs is atrocious too.
However "totalitarian sewage" is a bizarre claim. I suspect the tweeter saying that is more than a little unbalanced. Better not to amplify such stuff than advertise it.
With that fall in inflation, it looks like the Bank of England may have erred again with interest rates.
I'm not convinced. Looks like the decline isn't especially broad based. Underlying momentum in services is still too high for comfort. Things might look better in a couple of releases but right now I wouldn't be rushing to cut rates.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Or he will extract more money from mainland Europe to fund NATO. His big beef when in office seemed to be all the $ US spent protecting Europe when Europe ponied up very little cash in comparison.
That's a gripe many would share. But his remarks appear to go way beyond that, and his supporters even further into outright just wanting Russia to win.
So I think Trump pulling out cannot be rules out and would be very unpleasant.
With inflation down to 3.9%, those holding out for serious double-digit pay rises would be wise to consider an early settlement.
Core inflation down to 5.1% too.
There is a risk of deflation coming down the line.
On any savings I have, if they mature, I am locking in as good a deal as I can.
ASLEF have said they will continue to hold out. They think Labour will yield to their demands. The Junior Doctors have already said they won't settle in England for what they settled for in Scotland because, Tories. But that was a few months back.
I opened Metro's 1 yr saver about 5 minutes ago. A variable rate which might lower but my guess is it shouldn't go below 4, and if it does it's happy days with the mortgage in a year and a half's time. Nicely dovetails with the two regular savers I've got on the go.
Abuse at ballet schools - it is shocking but thoroughly unsurprising. The ingredients are all there.
I passing, there’s a reason why ballet makes such an effective theme for horror (Suspiria being one of the greatest horror movies of all time).
In contrast, I just watched the Korean drama Navillera on Netflix, which has the (somewhat improbable) premise of a ballet obsessed septuagenarian retiree learning to dance.
Utterly charming.
My 50 year old daughter does weekly ballet lessons with 80 year olds in their tutus. (Women)
Somewhat improbable as the basis for a compelling drama, I meant. But it's really good.
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally Kathy Frankovic March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
Abuse at ballet schools - it is shocking but thoroughly unsurprising. The ingredients are all there.
I passing, there’s a reason why ballet makes such an effective theme for horror (Suspiria being one of the greatest horror movies of all time).
In contrast, I just watched the Korean drama Navillera on Netflix, which has the (somewhat improbable) premise of a ballet obsessed septuagenarian retiree learning to dance.
Utterly charming.
My 50 year old daughter does weekly ballet lessons with 80 year olds in their tutus. (Women)
Somewhat improbable as the basis for a compelling drama, I meant. But it's really good.
Throw in some forbidden gay romance or a minor nazi setting subplot and it would win Oscars.
On topic, the really significant thing about the Colorado judgment is that it forces the Supreme Court to rapidly review it - and by extension, Trump's Jan 6th conduct. ...Therefore, to maintain the status quo pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court, we stay our ruling until January 4, 2024 (the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot). If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot..
This might well also accelerate the court's consideration of Trump's (IMO absurd) immunity defence.
I could almost believe that's why they ruled this way, which seems to have caught most observers by surprise.
Trump is not guaranteed to be convicted in any of the cases but obviously he doesn't want to take any chances and his legal strategy has openly been to delay everything by any means necessary no matter how ludicrous, so he can win the election, which would see most cases drop and neuter the rest. It could work.
An amenable judge has ensured that in the simplest case, and endless motions and appeals he hopes will achieve it in most of the others (the Georgia case was already starting too late).
Perhaps forcing a decision on some of his delaying appeals was worth the Colorado court making a decision they can be confident will be overturned.
They can slide on that though if the state party are allowed to shift their primary or can switch to a caucus or something.
There's also the theoretical possibility that Trump doesn't appeal the judgment (though that seems highly unlikely). After all, he doesn't need the CO votes for the nomination, and won't get them in the general election.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
Can’t really see Putin crossing the channel - he’s having enough bothers getting a few miles past his own border in Ukraine so the idea he could get through Poland, then Germany and France is a stretch.
On topic: Has Trump actually been convicted of insurrection ?
My guess is SCOTUS will rule 6-3 lifting the Colorado judgement but there is a fair chance Kagan might join the conservative justices.
Actually I'm revising that I think it'll be a 7-2 decision in Trump's favour.
No he’s not been convicted - worse than that, he was impeached for insurrection and was cleared by the Senate of the charges.
Agreed that SC will likely overturn the Colorado judgement.
Yes, in fairness it probably should. The argument for maintaining it would presumably be that banning someone from standing for election can have a lower standard of proof (perhaps just the bslsnce of probabilites) than a court of Senate conviction. But I think we get into dangerous territory if judges can decide who can stand.
For me the point is not that he's being banned from Election.
It is about whether a President is an Officer of the US, subject to the US Constitution.
I'd see it a parallel question with whether the Presidential Immunity in Office extends to criminal acts carried out by the President, which Trump has been asserting repeatedly as his key defence.
The core question is whether a President is above the law or not.
I think it was Judge Chutkan who noted in one of her rulings that 'Presidents are not Kings, and are subject to law.'
If Trump is not subject to law and constitution, imo it's undermining the whole reason why, in the US mind, they fought the War of Independence.
Perhaps Short-Term Rishi should try saving his financial backside by putting a tax back on tea consumption in the USA?
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally Kathy Frankovic March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
I don’t think Trump will want to upset Americans by severing ties with the UK
I can see him being ruthlessly mean to the Germans, etc
Trump is, regrettably, a Leader. He loves to be loved, but he's also said and done things the GOP base used to hate and now they love him for it and despise stalwart conservatives as being RINOs. Even the ones who used to sometimes disagree with him on foreign affairs are falling into line.
I think he could do pretty much anything and his grip over the base is so strong they would back it. Having won a second term despite all his legal issues he'd probably see himself as politically invincible.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Or he will extract more money from mainland Europe to fund NATO. His big beef when in office seemed to be all the $ US spent protecting Europe when Europe ponied up very little cash in comparison.
That's a gripe many would share. But his remarks appear to go way beyond that, and his supporters even further into outright just wanting Russia to win.
So I think Trump pulling out cannot be rules out and would be very unpleasant.
While there’s undoubtedly a few on both political extremes who seem to quite like Russia, the vast majority of Republican opposition to the war is based on domestic vs international spending commitments and priorities.
Find a way to support American defence sector jobs, while not “sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine”, and it becomes more popular. Perhaps a load of obsolete kit could be depreciated to almost nothing and sold to the UK, for example?
In the medium term, Europe is going to need to learn to defend itself, and that’s going to cost money.
Absolutely mental, the bastards will not get a penny from me, I will just stick more in pension and get tax relief and they will miss out on the VAT, spending etc. Morons could not run a bath
Is that the sound of the Laffer Curve… laffing?
Thing is, most of the time the laffer curve is (proven) rubbish. But when you have a devolved administration that’s in the same country as and right next door to - and defines itself by its difference to - another regime where the rate is very visibly lower, it does rather focus the mind.
We see the same in the US with state taxes. But this is good. We need experimentation. If higher taxes mean better services then there’s a trade off for people to consider.
You won't have any issue presenting that proof in simple and assimilable terms I take it.
Laffer curve aside there’s definitely an iron rule - let’s call it the Lucky Guy curve - that states that when TimS posts something at a time of day LuckyGuy is online, it will be met within seconds by a withering riposte. Even when the original post is actually sympathetic to his world view.
The original claim was made based on zero actual data. Subsequent analysis shows what is common sense: that higher tax rates raise more tax, unless they go completely bonkers and lead to behavioural change (usually emigration).
Tax policy is complicated and there are no simple rules that can explain taxpayer behaviour. If there were we’d long ago have solved our fiscal problems.
There are one or two things about the Laffer curve which have to be true. At 0% tax rate you raise nothing, and at 100% rate you will in the medium run raise nothing, while making people with any assets at all cross.
As the same basically will apply to a 0.001% rate (there are exceptions) and a 99.8% rate then it follows that there must be a figure somewhere between the two which is the sweet spot. This could be called the Colbert point, after the man who pointed out that "the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing".
It will likely very considerably between societies, in the real world - but I've seen a few academic papers which put it somewhere between 60 and 70%.
Which would probably have given poor old Laffer conniptions. The great bluffer.
Accords with my sense of it. I've always thought 65%. One for one, two for the pot. No modelling, just pure instinct.
I’m skeptical about tax rates as high as that for more libertarian reasons, but I think the Laffer argument against them largely dishonest, or deluded.
The original Laffer Curve was to illustrate a philosophical point.
Analytics were then done to estimate the shape of the curve (this is behavioural science so never precise).
Politicians and activists have tortured it well beyond what it was ever intended to be.
The Laffer Curve absolutely is 100% real.
Almost all claims (by left and right) about it are 100% bullshit.
65% I suspect is far, far too high a tax rate as people engage in tax avoidance at that rate or emigrate if they can. They higher the rate, the greater the reward for engaging in tax evasion, if you have a moderate tax rate there's no point evading taxes so people pay it - if its an obscene rate, then people find evading it very valuable.
The Universe's last proponent of the Laffer Curve proclaims: "The Laffer Curve absolutely is 100% real".
Anyone who doesn't think it's real is utterly stupid. It's fairly obvious that a 0% income tax rate will yield very little tax, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a 100% income tax will result in very little revenue, as people generally won't work for nothing. Given that we get substantial revenue at some tax rates in between, it therefore follows that there is some sort of a curve connecting these three known points.
You can make plausible sounding cases for all sorts of different curves (it's probably not a neat parabola with the maximum revenue point at 50%), and the curve may well be different shapes in different sorts of societies and cultures, but to deny it exists is up there with membership of the flat earth society.
Thoughtfully (except possibly for the Scots), the Scottish Government seem to have decided to provide some more empirical data to help us plot the curve. I've a sneaking feeling they are about to discover they are well on the wrong side of the curve with a marginal rate of almost 70% for some earners, but the next few years (if they persist with this policy) are going to actually give us some hard data, which is always fun. Of course, the effects won't all show up in year one, as people won't relocate to England overnight - in the just same way as if they raised income tax to 100% from tomorrow, it would raise a load of cash for a month or two, whilst we all adjusted to resorting to paying for everything cash in hand, but in a years time it would be raising almost nothing.
I can give you a whole lot of articles that confirm the Laffer Curve is nonsense. Here's one
It basically says an employee can’t increase their hours enough and the rich wouldn’t want to work harder because they make enough money for a good life anyway.
I will be generous and assume you didn’t read it before posting the link
Absolutely mental, the bastards will not get a penny from me, I will just stick more in pension and get tax relief and they will miss out on the VAT, spending etc. Morons could not run a bath
Is that the sound of the Laffer Curve… laffing?
Thing is, most of the time the laffer curve is (proven) rubbish. But when you have a devolved administration that’s in the same country as and right next door to - and defines itself by its difference to - another regime where the rate is very visibly lower, it does rather focus the mind.
We see the same in the US with state taxes. But this is good. We need experimentation. If higher taxes mean better services then there’s a trade off for people to consider.
You won't have any issue presenting that proof in simple and assimilable terms I take it.
Laffer curve aside there’s definitely an iron rule - let’s call it the Lucky Guy curve - that states that when TimS posts something at a time of day LuckyGuy is online, it will be met within seconds by a withering riposte. Even when the original post is actually sympathetic to his world view.
The original claim was made based on zero actual data. Subsequent analysis shows what is common sense: that higher tax rates raise more tax, unless they go completely bonkers and lead to behavioural change (usually emigration).
Tax policy is complicated and there are no simple rules that can explain taxpayer behaviour. If there were we’d long ago have solved our fiscal problems.
There are one or two things about the Laffer curve which have to be true. At 0% tax rate you raise nothing, and at 100% rate you will in the medium run raise nothing, while making people with any assets at all cross.
As the same basically will apply to a 0.001% rate (there are exceptions) and a 99.8% rate then it follows that there must be a figure somewhere between the two which is the sweet spot. This could be called the Colbert point, after the man who pointed out that "the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing".
It will likely very considerably between societies, in the real world - but I've seen a few academic papers which put it somewhere between 60 and 70%.
Which would probably have given poor old Laffer conniptions. The great bluffer.
Accords with my sense of it. I've always thought 65%. One for one, two for the pot. No modelling, just pure instinct.
I’m skeptical about tax rates as high as that for more libertarian reasons, but I think the Laffer argument against them largely dishonest, or deluded.
The original Laffer Curve was to illustrate a philosophical point.
Analytics were then done to estimate the shape of the curve (this is behavioural science so never precise).
Politicians and activists have tortured it well beyond what it was ever intended to be.
The Laffer Curve absolutely is 100% real.
Almost all claims (by left and right) about it are 100% bullshit.
65% I suspect is far, far too high a tax rate as people engage in tax avoidance at that rate or emigrate if they can. They higher the rate, the greater the reward for engaging in tax evasion, if you have a moderate tax rate there's no point evading taxes so people pay it - if its an obscene rate, then people find evading it very valuable.
The Universe's last proponent of the Laffer Curve proclaims: "The Laffer Curve absolutely is 100% real".
Anyone who doesn't think it's real is utterly stupid. It's fairly obvious that a 0% income tax rate will yield very little tax, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a 100% income tax will result in very little revenue, as people generally won't work for nothing. Given that we get substantial revenue at some tax rates in between, it therefore follows that there is some sort of a curve connecting these three known points.
You can make plausible sounding cases for all sorts of different curves (it's probably not a neat parabola with the maximum revenue point at 50%), and the curve may well be different shapes in different sorts of societies and cultures, but to deny it exists is up there with membership of the flat earth society.
Thoughtfully (except possibly for the Scots), the Scottish Government seem to have decided to provide some more empirical data to help us plot the curve. I've a sneaking feeling they are about to discover they are well on the wrong side of the curve with a marginal rate of almost 70% for some earners, but the next few years (if they persist with this policy) are going to actually give us some hard data, which is always fun. Of course, the effects won't all show up in year one, as people won't relocate to England overnight - in the just same way as if they raised income tax to 100% from tomorrow, it would raise a load of cash for a month or two, whilst we all adjusted to resorting to paying for everything cash in hand, but in a years time it would be raising almost nothing.
I can give you a whole lot of articles that confirm the Laffer Curve is nonsense. Here's one
I can't read the second article (pay walled), but the 1st article doesn't dispute the existence of a Laffer Curve. It's making claims about its shape, specifically that a tax rate of 35% is not over its peak. It actually say that at very high rates (80-90%) there will be a noticeable effect.
Given our discussion was sparked by the Scottish government going for a marginal rate for some people of 69.5%, rather than denying there is a curve, we could perhaps move on to the more interesting question, namely - is 69.5% over the revenue maximising peak or not?
That's a load of nonsense too. It totally ignores value creation by high earner, presuming that if they earn less because of high tax rates, the organisation they work for gets to keep the money they would have paid them, so it doesn't matter that those high earners earn less.
So imagine a medical consultant decides to only work 3 days a week instead of 5 because of his marginal tax rate. Great, the hospital gets to save 2/5th of his wages. Less great is that he'll only see 3/5ths of the number of patients.
The best case scenario is that the hospital manage to employ another consultant for 2 days a week at the same rate, and which point the government gets no extra tax revenue, and the hospital gets a load of extra admin from having two people doing one job.
If there is a shortage of consultants, which it will be if this behaviour is widely replicated, as we've almost just doubled the number required to do the same amount of work, then their wages will rise (supply and demand). Then they will go into high marginal tax sooner... So may decide to only do two days a week, and round the whole doom loop we go again.
Before long you discover that the results of your high tax policy are to massively increase costs or reduce output for the hospital, whilst raising very little tax. And then you find your consultant working cash in hand on his new "days off" with his mate whose a painter and decorator (don't laugh, I've seen this first hand!).
A hospital consultant on say, £120k, has their take home pay reduced from £75k to £70k because of an increase in marginal rates... will react by cutting their hours by 40% to end up with a take home pay of (checks) £55k. Right.
Snip
Yep that is exactly how people think. We are seeing it loads in all sorts of branches of consulting across lots of industries and also in employment. When people are getting towards the senior end of their careers they look at lot more closely at work/life balance. And things like the tax trap are what make them decide the time has come to scale back. We saw it with GPs when the new working arangments were introduced and lots of them decided the small amounts of extra money they got just wasn't worth the additional commitments.
It may not be logical in purely financial terms but such decisions are based value judgements weighing up lots of factors and doing the same work for less money is definitely one that triggers a lot of people to reassess their careers.
The question people like that will be asking themselves is - if I can work 3 days a week for £350 a day after tax, and I don't really need the money anyway, do I really want to bother to do an extra two days a week for £150 a day? Those two days are already somewhat unappealing at £200 a day, so that 25% cut in pay for working those two extra days may well trigger the final "stuff it, why am I doing this when I could be on the golf course" reaction.
As for the cash in hand - yes it happens! I worked with a fairly senior engineer for a major car company. He spent his "days off" helping his mate who was a builder - I'm fairly sure on a cash basis.
On topic: Has Trump actually been convicted of insurrection ?
My guess is SCOTUS will rule 6-3 lifting the Colorado judgement but there is a fair chance Kagan might join the conservative justices.
Actually I'm revising that I think it'll be a 7-2 decision in Trump's favour.
No he’s not been convicted - worse than that, he was impeached for insurrection and was cleared by the Senate of the charges.
Agreed that SC will likely overturn the Colorado judgement.
Yes, in fairness it probably should. The argument for maintaining it would presumably be that banning someone from standing for election can have a lower standard of proof (perhaps just the bslsnce of probabilites) than a court of Senate conviction. But I think we get into dangerous territory if judges can decide who can stand.
The point is not that he's being banned from Election, I think.
It is about whether a President is an Officer of the US, subject to the US Constitution.
I'd see it a parallel question with whether the Presidential Immunity in Office extends to criminal acts carried out by the President, which Trump has been asserting repeatedly as his key defence.
The core question is whether the President is above the law or not.
I think it was Judge Chutkan who noted in one of her rulings that 'Presidents are not Kings, and are subject to law.'
If Trump is not subject to law and constitution, it's undermining the whole reason why, in the US mind, they fought the War of Independence.
Perhaps Short-Term Rishi can save his financial butt by putting a tax back on tea consumption in the USA?
That's what I alluded to above. This precipitates an early consideration of those issues, which might otherwise have been delayed.
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally Kathy Frankovic March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
I don’t think Trump will want to upset Americans by severing ties with the UK
I can see him being ruthlessly mean to the Germans, etc
Trump is, regrettably, a Leader. He loves to be loved, but he's also said and done things the GOP base used to hate and now they love him for it and despise stalwart conservatives as being RINOs. Even the ones who used to sometimes disagree with him on foreign affairs are falling into line.
I think he could do pretty much anything and his grip over the base is so strong they would back it. Having won a second term despite all his legal issues he'd probably see himself as politically invincible.
Trump has a golf course in the UK. For that reason alone he will send US Marines to defend Blighty
With inflation down to 3.9%, those holding out for serious double-digit pay rises would be wise to consider an early settlement.
Core inflation down to 5.1% too.
There is a risk of deflation coming down the line.
On any savings I have, if they mature, I am locking in as good a deal as I can.
ASLEF have said they will continue to hold out. They think Labour will yield to their demands. The Junior Doctors have already said they won't settle in England for what they settled for in Scotland because, Tories. But that was a few months back.
I opened Metro's 1 yr saver about 5 minutes ago. A variable rate which might lower but my guess is it shouldn't go below 4, and if it does it's happy days with the mortgage in a year and a half's time. Nicely dovetails with the two regular savers I've got on the go.
The media have not reported the steady decline in mortage renewal rates with the same vigour they reported the rise in them. Oddly !!!!
I got a regular saver with the Coventry at 7% a year and one with Lloyds at 6.25% a year. Very pleased with both. Put the max into them both each month.
I have been able to renew in September with Kent Reliance at 6.17% for 2 years. Those rates are now nearer to 4.9% for 2 years.
Raisin usually have some pretty good rates. I have some money with them. Sharia compliant accounts are worth looking at too.
On topic: Has Trump actually been convicted of insurrection ?
My guess is SCOTUS will rule 6-3 lifting the Colorado judgement but there is a fair chance Kagan might join the conservative justices.
Actually I'm revising that I think it'll be a 7-2 decision in Trump's favour.
No he’s not been convicted - worse than that, he was impeached for insurrection and was cleared by the Senate of the charges.
Agreed that SC will likely overturn the Colorado judgement.
Yes, in fairness it probably should. The argument for maintaining it would presumably be that banning someone from standing for election can have a lower standard of proof (perhaps just the bslsnce of probabilites) than a court of Senate conviction. But I think we get into dangerous territory if judges can decide who can stand.
Judges already can decide that if someone failed to meet various criteria and that was challenged. I don't think that principle is the issue at all. It's their job to decide questions like this.
The actual issue is, as you note, about the standard applied in making this specific decision, which looks rather low for such a serious matter.
On topic, the really significant thing about the Colorado judgment is that it forces the Supreme Court to rapidly review it - and by extension, Trump's Jan 6th conduct. ...Therefore, to maintain the status quo pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court, we stay our ruling until January 4, 2024 (the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot). If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot..
This might well also accelerate the court's consideration of Trump's (IMO absurd) immunity defence.
I could almost believe that's why they ruled this way, which seems to have caught most observers by surprise.
Trump is not guaranteed to be convicted in any of the cases but obviously he doesn't want to take any chances and his legal strategy has openly been to delay everything by any means necessary no matter how ludicrous, so he can win the election, which would see most cases drop and neuter the rest. It could work.
An amenable judge has ensured that in the simplest case, and endless motions and appeals he hopes will achieve it in most of the others (the Georgia case was already starting too late).
Perhaps forcing a decision on some of his delaying appeals was worth the Colorado court making a decision they can be confident will be overturned.
They can slide on that though if the state party are allowed to shift their primary or can switch to a caucus or something.
There's also the theoretical possibility that Trump doesn't appeal the judgment (though that seems highly unlikely). After all, he doesn't need the CO votes for the nomination, and won't get them in the general election.
One issue there is that there are parallel legal actions in other states, and if the Supreme Court leaves it floating there will be a cloud of fog where clarity is needed.
And I think the Supreme Court like being in control of things.
I think it is precedented for them to intervene directly, in important questions. Might they do this here?
(In one of the other Trump cases - I think the Washington DC Election Fraud one - the Prosecutor has appealed to both the local supreme court, and the USA Supreme Court to intervene directly.)
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally Kathy Frankovic March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
I don’t think Trump will want to upset Americans by severing ties with the UK
I can see him being ruthlessly mean to the Germans, etc
Trump is, regrettably, a Leader. He loves to be loved, but he's also said and done things the GOP base used to hate and now they love him for it and despise stalwart conservatives as being RINOs. Even the ones who used to sometimes disagree with him on foreign affairs are falling into line.
I think he could do pretty much anything and his grip over the base is so strong they would back it. Having won a second term despite all his legal issues he'd probably see himself as politically invincible.
Trump has a golf course in the UK. For that reason alone he will send US Marines to defend Blighty
We'd have to take down the windfarm nearby that he's always moaning about first.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
It's a bit bizarre to talk about realpolitik and then to argue for a UK defence strategy based on an old poll showing that a minority of Americans see the UK as the US's biggest ally.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
Think about this further; I feel that there is a strong national interest argument in holding the UK election in May/June.
We all need any incoming government to have a chance to establish itself before dealing with the fallout of the US election.
If the UK election was in October, and especially if the result was close (which is possible IMO), it would be hugely challenging for the new administration simultaneously to establish itself and deal with, what could be, the biggest Foreign policy challenge of the decade.
On topic: Has Trump actually been convicted of insurrection ?
My guess is SCOTUS will rule 6-3 lifting the Colorado judgement but there is a fair chance Kagan might join the conservative justices.
Actually I'm revising that I think it'll be a 7-2 decision in Trump's favour.
No he’s not been convicted - worse than that, he was impeached for insurrection and was cleared by the Senate of the charges.
Agreed that SC will likely overturn the Colorado judgement.
Yes, in fairness it probably should. The argument for maintaining it would presumably be that banning someone from standing for election can have a lower standard of proof (perhaps just the bslsnce of probabilites) than a court of Senate conviction. But I think we get into dangerous territory if judges can decide who can stand.
For me the point is not that he's being banned from Election.
It is about whether a President is an Officer of the US, subject to the US Constitution.
I'd see it a parallel question with whether the Presidential Immunity in Office extends to criminal acts carried out by the President, which Trump has been asserting repeatedly as his key defence.
The core question is whether a President is above the law or not.
I think it was Judge Chutkan who noted in one of her rulings that 'Presidents are not Kings, and are subject to law.'
If Trump is not subject to law and constitution, imo it's undermining the whole reason why, in the US mind, they fought the War of Independence.
Perhaps Short-Term Rishi should try saving his financial backside by putting a tax back on tea consumption in the USA?
I'm not an originalist by any means, but seeing so many Americans argue the constitution intended the VP to have the power to set aside elections and a single person to decide things (the Pence plot) and that it will have intended former US presidents to essentially be immune from prosecution for acts in or out of office (given they say a probable candidate should for that reason not be charged), does make me think about what the framers would make of those arguments.
Think about this further; I feel that there is a strong national interest argument in holding the UK election in May/June.
We all need any incoming government to have a chance to establish itself before dealing with the fallout of the US election.
If the UK election was in October, and especially if the result was close (which is possible IMO), it would be hugely challenging for the new administration simultaneously to establish itself and deal with, what could be, the biggest Foreign policy challenge of the decade.
Better to get our election out of the way
Perhaps that's the last throw of the dice from Rishi. Don't risk change is a fundamental strategy after all.
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally Kathy Frankovic March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
I don’t think Trump will want to upset Americans by severing ties with the UK
I can see him being ruthlessly mean to the Germans, etc
Trump is, regrettably, a Leader. He loves to be loved, but he's also said and done things the GOP base used to hate and now they love him for it and despise stalwart conservatives as being RINOs. Even the ones who used to sometimes disagree with him on foreign affairs are falling into line.
I think he could do pretty much anything and his grip over the base is so strong they would back it. Having won a second term despite all his legal issues he'd probably see himself as politically invincible.
Trump has a golf course in the UK. For that reason alone he will send US Marines to defend Blighty
Two actually, both in Scotland. Sorry lads, you're going to have to hoor some piece of England's heritage if you want the marines coming in.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Think about this further; I feel that there is a strong national interest argument in holding the UK election in May/June.
We all need any incoming government to have a chance to establish itself before dealing with the fallout of the US election.
If the UK election was in October, and especially if the result was close (which is possible IMO), it would be hugely challenging for the new administration simultaneously to establish itself and deal with, what could be, the biggest Foreign policy challenge of the decade.
Better to get our election out of the way
The Tories haven't acted in the national interest for the last 8 years, why would they start now?.
Back from my first pre-Christmas weekend away in Kent. One thing that I notice is that Canterbury is smaller than my North Notts market town, yet has *four* Universities; part of levelling up needs to be long term institutions, which here are rather missing.
TSE will be impressed - it was a Strictly Finals Party, watching and walking, and unfortunately not much dancing.
My first recommended PB TV for the holiday: a 1972 series called Nairn Across Britain - 50 years ago, when OGH was (possibly) a twenty-something stylish young gent in a fur coat and orange jeans.
Ian Nairn taking rail a canal boat across Britain looking at towns along the canals, and reflecting on what it was & what he thought could happen.
Canterbury's a bit of a dump though isn't it? Went last year expecting it to be like Bath, Oxford or York, but no, it's a bit scummy.
How dare you! Finest city in England. My Dad’s from York and I went to law school there, and I am an Oxford graduate, but neither hold a candle to my home City. Oxford in particular has gone to the dogs. Canterbury’s let down slightly by the end that got wiped out in the Baedecker raid.
Yes, Oxford has become scruffier and has less of the charm than it did. Maybe letting more comprehensive types in?
I had a girlfriend at Univ a good few years back, so spent a fair amount of time round the university without actually studying there.
I always quite liked the fact that Oxford had a proper scruffy town attached to it; adds to the charm for me as opposed to e.g. Cambridge. But then I’m from Donny.
Used to be called the Latin Quarter of Cowley by some, as I recall. Oddly enough my view of Oxford is that it's been gentrified - when I used to visit my chums there and pub crawl all along the river/railway/canal corridor from north to south in the 80s there was, in between Victorian brick terraces, a lovely assortment of waste land from old gasworks and odd bits and chunks of open space, big gardens, metalbashing workshops, snippets of land between canal and railway etc., and old railway sidings and the like. Now it's all homogeneously crammed with little Barratt boxes and blocks of flats and my fave pubs have gone. I was surprised there are any allotments left.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Our nuke, conventional military and intel ties alone mean that we will stick with the USA. We won’t dump Washington for Brussels. Believing otherwise is Remoaner delusion
On topic: Has Trump actually been convicted of insurrection ?
My guess is SCOTUS will rule 6-3 lifting the Colorado judgement but there is a fair chance Kagan might join the conservative justices.
Actually I'm revising that I think it'll be a 7-2 decision in Trump's favour.
No he’s not been convicted - worse than that, he was impeached for insurrection and was cleared by the Senate of the charges.
Agreed that SC will likely overturn the Colorado judgement.
Yes, in fairness it probably should. The argument for maintaining it would presumably be that banning someone from standing for election can have a lower standard of proof (perhaps just the bslsnce of probabilites) than a court of Senate conviction. But I think we get into dangerous territory if judges can decide who can stand.
The point is not that he's being banned from Election, I think.
It is about whether a President is an Officer of the US, subject to the US Constitution.
I'd see it a parallel question with whether the Presidential Immunity in Office extends to criminal acts carried out by the President, which Trump has been asserting repeatedly as his key defence.
The core question is whether the President is above the law or not.
I think it was Judge Chutkan who noted in one of her rulings that 'Presidents are not Kings, and are subject to law.'
If Trump is not subject to law and constitution, it's undermining the whole reason why, in the US mind, they fought the War of Independence.
Perhaps Short-Term Rishi can save his financial butt by putting a tax back on tea consumption in the USA?
That's what I alluded to above. This precipitates an early consideration of those issues, which might otherwise have been delayed.
Despite liking to throw their weight around as the unequal third branch of government I imagine the Supreme Court collectively would prefer to slide on some very political questions where they can. That is the flip side of law being so political, but not wanting to decide every major political question via the Court .
They are, after all, just politicians in fancy dress, but they are at least pretty intelligent, and not entirely in sync with their political allies, since they a) can take a longer term view, b) have a joint interest in advancing the Court as an institution , c) can be occasionally independent because they cannot realistically be punished, politically or otherwise, for their rulings.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
Non nuclear - power and information cables for commerce plus pipelines for hydrocarbons.
With inflation, for all the huffing and puffing about interest rates, wages, oil etc doesn't it all come down to gas?
There was a crazy increase in natural gas prices and now they have come down again. Not quite to where they were before but manageable. Does much else matter really. So much heating and electricity in shops, factories, offices must come from gas.
Horrifying stat from Reddit - on the SNP's new tax bands, if you went to Uni in England and then get a job in Scotland earning over £100,000, your marginal top rate of tax is 78.5%
@TheScreamingEagles - it’s true btw - just updated our payslip validation software and that’s the figure we get
Even without a student loan is 69.5%
45% income tax 22.5% from the withdrawal of the allowance 2% NI
What’s the threshold for the top rate? Presumably you aren’t ending up taking up £31,500 from yer £100,000 salary.
No, it will be nearer to £60k in your pocket, would be my guesstimate.
It’s just that if you get a pay rise, most of it disappears into the maw.
From talking to people, the marginal rate stuff hits home on pay rise day - they fire up one of the online calculators to work out how much extra they will have. Or not.
With inflation down to 3.9%, those holding out for serious double-digit pay rises would be wise to consider an early settlement.
Not really. The double-digit inflation has already happened.
Indeed. As so often, our PB Tories and fellow travellers like to pretend that inflation is merely an instantaneous rate and that the time-summed integral thereof is of no relevance to real life, which is completely untrue.
Absolutely mental, the bastards will not get a penny from me, I will just stick more in pension and get tax relief and they will miss out on the VAT, spending etc. Morons could not run a bath
Is that the sound of the Laffer Curve… laffing?
Thing is, most of the time the laffer curve is (proven) rubbish. But when you have a devolved administration that’s in the same country as and right next door to - and defines itself by its difference to - another regime where the rate is very visibly lower, it does rather focus the mind.
We see the same in the US with state taxes. But this is good. We need experimentation. If higher taxes mean better services then there’s a trade off for people to consider.
You won't have any issue presenting that proof in simple and assimilable terms I take it.
Laffer curve aside there’s definitely an iron rule - let’s call it the Lucky Guy curve - that states that when TimS posts something at a time of day LuckyGuy is online, it will be met within seconds by a withering riposte. Even when the original post is actually sympathetic to his world view.
The original claim was made based on zero actual data. Subsequent analysis shows what is common sense: that higher tax rates raise more tax, unless they go completely bonkers and lead to behavioural change (usually emigration).
Tax policy is complicated and there are no simple rules that can explain taxpayer behaviour. If there were we’d long ago have solved our fiscal problems.
There are one or two things about the Laffer curve which have to be true. At 0% tax rate you raise nothing, and at 100% rate you will in the medium run raise nothing, while making people with any assets at all cross.
As the same basically will apply to a 0.001% rate (there are exceptions) and a 99.8% rate then it follows that there must be a figure somewhere between the two which is the sweet spot. This could be called the Colbert point, after the man who pointed out that "the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing".
It will likely very considerably between societies, in the real world - but I've seen a few academic papers which put it somewhere between 60 and 70%.
Which would probably have given poor old Laffer conniptions. The great bluffer.
Accords with my sense of it. I've always thought 65%. One for one, two for the pot. No modelling, just pure instinct.
I’m skeptical about tax rates as high as that for more libertarian reasons, but I think the Laffer argument against them largely dishonest, or deluded.
The original Laffer Curve was to illustrate a philosophical point.
Analytics were then done to estimate the shape of the curve (this is behavioural science so never precise).
Politicians and activists have tortured it well beyond what it was ever intended to be.
The Laffer Curve absolutely is 100% real.
Almost all claims (by left and right) about it are 100% bullshit.
65% I suspect is far, far too high a tax rate as people engage in tax avoidance at that rate or emigrate if they can. They higher the rate, the greater the reward for engaging in tax evasion, if you have a moderate tax rate there's no point evading taxes so people pay it - if its an obscene rate, then people find evading it very valuable.
The Universe's last proponent of the Laffer Curve proclaims: "The Laffer Curve absolutely is 100% real".
Anyone who doesn't think it's real is utterly stupid. It's fairly obvious that a 0% income tax rate will yield very little tax, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a 100% income tax will result in very little revenue, as people generally won't work for nothing. Given that we get substantial revenue at some tax rates in between, it therefore follows that there is some sort of a curve connecting these three known points.
You can make plausible sounding cases for all sorts of different curves (it's probably not a neat parabola with the maximum revenue point at 50%), and the curve may well be different shapes in different sorts of societies and cultures, but to deny it exists is up there with membership of the flat earth society.
Thoughtfully (except possibly for the Scots), the Scottish Government seem to have decided to provide some more empirical data to help us plot the curve. I've a sneaking feeling they are about to discover they are well on the wrong side of the curve with a marginal rate of almost 70% for some earners, but the next few years (if they persist with this policy) are going to actually give us some hard data, which is always fun. Of course, the effects won't all show up in year one, as people won't relocate to England overnight - in the just same way as if they raised income tax to 100% from tomorrow, it would raise a load of cash for a month or two, whilst we all adjusted to resorting to paying for everything cash in hand, but in a years time it would be raising almost nothing.
I can give you a whole lot of articles that confirm the Laffer Curve is nonsense. Here's one
It basically says an employee can’t increase their hours enough and the rich wouldn’t want to work harder because they make enough money for a good life anyway.
I will be generous and assume you didn’t read it before posting the link
Absolutely mental, the bastards will not get a penny from me, I will just stick more in pension and get tax relief and they will miss out on the VAT, spending etc. Morons could not run a bath
Is that the sound of the Laffer Curve… laffing?
Thing is, most of the time the laffer curve is (proven) rubbish. But when you have a devolved administration that’s in the same country as and right next door to - and defines itself by its difference to - another regime where the rate is very visibly lower, it does rather focus the mind.
We see the same in the US with state taxes. But this is good. We need experimentation. If higher taxes mean better services then there’s a trade off for people to consider.
You won't have any issue presenting that proof in simple and assimilable terms I take it.
Laffer curve aside there’s definitely an iron rule - let’s call it the Lucky Guy curve - that states that when TimS posts something at a time of day LuckyGuy is online, it will be met within seconds by a withering riposte. Even when the original post is actually sympathetic to his world view.
The original claim was made based on zero actual data. Subsequent analysis shows what is common sense: that higher tax rates raise more tax, unless they go completely bonkers and lead to behavioural change (usually emigration).
Tax policy is complicated and there are no simple rules that can explain taxpayer behaviour. If there were we’d long ago have solved our fiscal problems.
There are one or two things about the Laffer curve which have to be true. At 0% tax rate you raise nothing, and at 100% rate you will in the medium run raise nothing, while making people with any assets at all cross.
As the same basically will apply to a 0.001% rate (there are exceptions) and a 99.8% rate then it follows that there must be a figure somewhere between the two which is the sweet spot. This could be called the Colbert point, after the man who pointed out that "the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing".
It will likely very considerably between societies, in the real world - but I've seen a few academic papers which put it somewhere between 60 and 70%.
Which would probably have given poor old Laffer conniptions. The great bluffer.
Accords with my sense of it. I've always thought 65%. One for one, two for the pot. No modelling, just pure instinct.
I’m skeptical about tax rates as high as that for more libertarian reasons, but I think the Laffer argument against them largely dishonest, or deluded.
The original Laffer Curve was to illustrate a philosophical point.
Analytics were then done to estimate the shape of the curve (this is behavioural science so never precise).
Politicians and activists have tortured it well beyond what it was ever intended to be.
The Laffer Curve absolutely is 100% real.
Almost all claims (by left and right) about it are 100% bullshit.
65% I suspect is far, far too high a tax rate as people engage in tax avoidance at that rate or emigrate if they can. They higher the rate, the greater the reward for engaging in tax evasion, if you have a moderate tax rate there's no point evading taxes so people pay it - if its an obscene rate, then people find evading it very valuable.
The Universe's last proponent of the Laffer Curve proclaims: "The Laffer Curve absolutely is 100% real".
Anyone who doesn't think it's real is utterly stupid. It's fairly obvious that a 0% income tax rate will yield very little tax, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a 100% income tax will result in very little revenue, as people generally won't work for nothing. Given that we get substantial revenue at some tax rates in between, it therefore follows that there is some sort of a curve connecting these three known points.
You can make plausible sounding cases for all sorts of different curves (it's probably not a neat parabola with the maximum revenue point at 50%), and the curve may well be different shapes in different sorts of societies and cultures, but to deny it exists is up there with membership of the flat earth society.
Thoughtfully (except possibly for the Scots), the Scottish Government seem to have decided to provide some more empirical data to help us plot the curve. I've a sneaking feeling they are about to discover they are well on the wrong side of the curve with a marginal rate of almost 70% for some earners, but the next few years (if they persist with this policy) are going to actually give us some hard data, which is always fun. Of course, the effects won't all show up in year one, as people won't relocate to England overnight - in the just same way as if they raised income tax to 100% from tomorrow, it would raise a load of cash for a month or two, whilst we all adjusted to resorting to paying for everything cash in hand, but in a years time it would be raising almost nothing.
I can give you a whole lot of articles that confirm the Laffer Curve is nonsense. Here's one
I can't read the second article (pay walled), but the 1st article doesn't dispute the existence of a Laffer Curve. It's making claims about its shape, specifically that a tax rate of 35% is not over its peak. It actually say that at very high rates (80-90%) there will be a noticeable effect.
Given our discussion was sparked by the Scottish government going for a marginal rate for some people of 69.5%, rather than denying there is a curve, we could perhaps move on to the more interesting question, namely - is 69.5% over the revenue maximising peak or not?
That's a load of nonsense too. It totally ignores value creation by high earner, presuming that if they earn less because of high tax rates, the organisation they work for gets to keep the money they would have paid them, so it doesn't matter that those high earners earn less.
So imagine a medical consultant decides to only work 3 days a week instead of 5 because of his marginal tax rate. Great, the hospital gets to save 2/5th of his wages. Less great is that he'll only see 3/5ths of the number of patients.
The best case scenario is that the hospital manage to employ another consultant for 2 days a week at the same rate, and which point the government gets no extra tax revenue, and the hospital gets a load of extra admin from having two people doing one job.
If there is a shortage of consultants, which it will be if this behaviour is widely replicated, as we've almost just doubled the number required to do the same amount of work, then their wages will rise (supply and demand). Then they will go into high marginal tax sooner... So may decide to only do two days a week, and round the whole doom loop we go again.
Before long you discover that the results of your high tax policy are to massively increase costs or reduce output for the hospital, whilst raising very little tax. And then you find your consultant working cash in hand on his new "days off" with his mate whose a painter and decorator (don't laugh, I've seen this first hand!).
A hospital consultant on say, £120k, has their take home pay reduced from £75k to £70k because of an increase in marginal rates... will react by cutting their hours by 40% to end up with a take home pay of (checks) £55k. Right.
Snip
Yep that is exactly how people think. We are seeing it loads in all sorts of branches of consulting across lots of indstries and also in employment. When people are getting towards the senior end of their careers they look at lot more closely at work/life balance. And things like the tax trap are what make them decide the time has come to scale back. We saw it with GPs when the new working arangments were introduced and lots of them decided the small amounts of extra money they got just wasn't worth the additional commitments.
It may not be logical in purely financial terms but such decisions are based value judgements weighing up lots of factors and doing the same work for less money is definitely one that triggers a lot of people to reassess their careers.
I fully accept it happens, particularly with those later in life, kids left home, mortgaged paid etc., but in return I ask you to recognise that the other scenario also happens: take home pay reduces so I'm going to work harder, longer, find a better job, etc.
Not sure that in the realms of consulting it is that common when you get to the senior end of careers. And how many Hospital Consultants are even able to increase their hours? The few I know seem to be working almost 24/7 these days given the state of the Health Service. (slight exaggeration of course but know what I mean)
I mean I do get your point but it is predicated on a set of assumptions about the NHS which I think are false, and all on the negative side.
I was really talking about the overall effect of increasing taxation and particularly in respect of the alleged Laffer effect that the tax take would go down because people will work less. My contention is that for every person in a position to reduce their effort 'because it's not worth it' there's another who will increase effort to maintain their income.
Both sides are inherently difficult to prove of course but let's not maintain* the fiction that the Laffer Curve is proven or probable.
(* I am not suggesting you were btw)
Of course the curve exist, despite your denials, because the effects of 0%, 100% and somewhere in the middle taxation rates are readily observable. To deny it is up there with denying the existence of gravity.
We're just arguing about the shape of the curve. From your postings, you think the peak is at a higher percentage than we do. You might even be right (although you're probably not), but that doesn't mean their isn't a Laffer curve.
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally Kathy Frankovic March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
I don’t think Trump will want to upset Americans by severing ties with the UK
I can see him being ruthlessly mean to the Germans, etc
Trump is, regrettably, a Leader. He loves to be loved, but he's also said and done things the GOP base used to hate and now they love him for it and despise stalwart conservatives as being RINOs. Even the ones who used to sometimes disagree with him on foreign affairs are falling into line.
I think he could do pretty much anything and his grip over the base is so strong they would back it. Having won a second term despite all his legal issues he'd probably see himself as politically invincible.
Trump has a golf course in the UK. For that reason alone he will send US Marines to defend Blighty
Two actually, both in Scotland. Sorry lads, you're going to have to hoor some piece of England's heritage if you want the marines coming in.
He's going demand Buckingham Palace be renamed Trump London isn't he?
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Our nuke, conventional military and intel ties alone mean that we will stick with the USA. We won’t dump Washington for Brussels. Believing otherwise is Remoaner delusion
The delusion is believing that a minority US public opinion is going to influence the decision making of a US President who has walked out on NATO.
Let this be a lesson to those who wish to solve fundamentally political issues through legal means. Joylon Maughan take note.
Is there any point at which the Democrats see sense at tell Biden to stand down?
I think they’re trying to find a way around the Kamala Harris problem, the problem being that she’s even less popular than Biden.
The suggestion has been that Biden will announce his standing down very late, just before the Convention, and let the DNC bigwigs nominate Newsom as the candidate behind closed doors.
Why is Harris not popular. She does not strike me as the most dynamic of go getters but she seems relatively inoffensive as well.
A bit beige. A political Tim Henman.
Harris has suffered from the fact that, with a "hung" Senate, she has had to spend more time there than doing the "normal" VP stuff glad-handing around the country.
Whether a majority of the US is supportive of Ukraine in theory and how many of its political leaders are openly pro Russia or not, a majority of the Congress are at the least indifferent about it, their actions demonstrate that clearly.
Yep, I think the lawyers are in stepping away from the huge dog mess mode. They're now issuing denials that they advised Mone to deny links to Medpro.
I think the most amusing recent tale was Mone threatening the National with legal action if they stated that the made up claim that her Glasgow house was once lived in by Einstein was in fact made up. Frightening to think she was once a person of influence involved (however vestigially) in the government of the UK.
Maybe we have a secret weapon with Trump through the king. Trump loves gaudy displays of wealth, and he can probably sympathise with his majesty debasing himself to collect briefcases full of cash.
Abuse at ballet schools - it is shocking but thoroughly unsurprising. The ingredients are all there.
In passing, there’s a reason why ballet makes such an effective theme for horror (Suspiria being one of the greatest horror movies of all time).
The interesting (or predictable) thing about the story is that the schools point blank deny the complaints, and point to their outstanding OFSTED rating as justification. Which suggests how useful OFSTED is in terms of actual safeguarding.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Poland would fight. And could probably beat Russia, even with relatively little assistance. If nothing else a huge chunk of Russias capability will be fighting the Ukrainians, still.
On the US/UK structures - the nukes are interesting. The US and U.K. programs are interrwined to the point that Chuck Hansen and others suggested that instead of shared information, the US and the UK build nuclear weapons jointly, with design features from both programs in combined designs. For example, the U.K. introduced the Americans to spherical secondaries (one of the reasons it took so long to get the U.K. H bomb to work).
While the factories are separate - ownership of the designs would be interesting.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Our nuke, conventional military and intel ties alone mean that we will stick with the USA. We won’t dump Washington for Brussels. Believing otherwise is Remoaner delusion
The delusion is believing that a minority US public opinion is going to influence the decision making of a US President who has walked out on NATO.
Trump isn’t going to walk out on AUKUS. Nor is he gonna abandon Canada - it would be strategically impossible anyway
I can see him withdrawing from his commitment to mainland Europe - or at least making such scary noises he forces the EU to pay for its own defence
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally Kathy Frankovic March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
I don’t think Trump will want to upset Americans by severing ties with the UK
I can see him being ruthlessly mean to the Germans, etc
Trump is, regrettably, a Leader. He loves to be loved, but he's also said and done things the GOP base used to hate and now they love him for it and despise stalwart conservatives as being RINOs. Even the ones who used to sometimes disagree with him on foreign affairs are falling into line.
I think he could do pretty much anything and his grip over the base is so strong they would back it. Having won a second term despite all his legal issues he'd probably see himself as politically invincible.
Trump has a golf course in the UK. For that reason alone he will send US Marines to defend Blighty
Two actually, both in Scotland. Sorry lads, you're going to have to hoor some piece of England's heritage if you want the marines coming in.
He's going demand Buckingham Palace be renamed Trump London isn't he?
Quick question for Pbers - I’m a business owner who takes minimum wage to myself and takes out dividends for the bulk of income. I want to apply for a personal loan to cover building works but, when it gets to the bit of income, often the guidance is unclear whether it covers dividends as income. Also, if the company wants me to upload documents to provide proof of income, the dividend payments have not been made over equal time amounts. Any advice as to what would be best to do?
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally Kathy Frankovic March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
I don’t think Trump will want to upset Americans by severing ties with the UK
I can see him being ruthlessly mean to the Germans, etc
Trump is, regrettably, a Leader. He loves to be loved, but he's also said and done things the GOP base used to hate and now they love him for it and despise stalwart conservatives as being RINOs. Even the ones who used to sometimes disagree with him on foreign affairs are falling into line.
I think he could do pretty much anything and his grip over the base is so strong they would back it. Having won a second term despite all his legal issues he'd probably see himself as politically invincible.
Trump has a golf course in the UK. For that reason alone he will send US Marines to defend Blighty
Two actually, both in Scotland. Sorry lads, you're going to have to hoor some piece of England's heritage if you want the marines coming in.
He's going demand Buckingham Palace be renamed Trump London isn't he?
Abuse at ballet schools - it is shocking but thoroughly unsurprising. The ingredients are all there.
In passing, there’s a reason why ballet makes such an effective theme for horror (Suspiria being one of the greatest horror movies of all time).
The interesting (or predictable) thing about the story is that the schools point blank deny the complaints, and point to their outstanding OFSTED rating as justification. Which suggests how useful OFSTED is in terms of actual safeguarding.
It's like councils who went bankrupt having had audits show no issue years or sometimes months before.
Bureaucracy can, in fact, be very useful. But we have an epidemic of tick box cultures.
Nothing seems to work, even the processes designed to check if things work.
Horrifying stat from Reddit - on the SNP's new tax bands, if you went to Uni in England and then get a job in Scotland earning over £100,000, your marginal top rate of tax is 78.5%
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Our nuke, conventional military and intel ties alone mean that we will stick with the USA. We won’t dump Washington for Brussels. Believing otherwise is Remoaner delusion
In my view it would be the end of five eyes. Trump cannot be trusted. I hope conversations with the other three members are along these lines. If Trump pulls out of Nato? I think it would still be in our interests to keep a reduced Nato going. Europe has the capability to defend the Baltics. Does it have the nerve?
Even without the US, Russia remains bogged down in Ukraine, is haemorrhaging money and soldiers. Putin might not care about the latter but he did revealingly overstate the number of troops he has in Ukraine by 50%. Many of them not being very top draw.
Horrifying stat from Reddit - on the SNP's new tax bands, if you went to Uni in England and then get a job in Scotland earning over £100,000, your marginal top rate of tax is 78.5%
Abuse at ballet schools - it is shocking but thoroughly unsurprising. The ingredients are all there.
In passing, there’s a reason why ballet makes such an effective theme for horror (Suspiria being one of the greatest horror movies of all time).
The interesting (or predictable) thing about the story is that the schools point blank deny the complaints, and point to their outstanding OFSTED rating as justification. Which suggests how useful OFSTED is in terms of actual safeguarding.
It's like councils who went bankrupt having had audits show no issue years or sometimes months before.
Bureaucracy can, in fact, be very useful. But we have an epidemic of tick box cultures.
Nothing seems to work, even the processes designed to check if things work.
The disconnect between the resources put into bureaucracy and the value derived from it is one of the worse aspects of the UK in recent years.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Poland would fight. And could probably beat Russia, even with relatively little assistance. If nothing else a huge chunk of Russias capability will be fighting the Ukrainians, still.
On the US/UK structures - the nukes are interesting. The US and U.K. programs are interrwined to the point that Chuck Hansen and others suggested that instead of shared information, the US and the UK build nuclear weapons jointly, with design features from both programs in combined designs. For example, the U.K. introduced the Americans to spherical secondaries (one of the reasons it took so long to get the U.K. H bomb to work).
While the factories are separate - ownership of the designs would be interesting.
Isn't all of that in contravention of the non-profileration treaty?
"I need to make a very important decision with a general election pending in the first half of next year. I need to put North West Leicestershire first, above any Party allegiance. I will continue standing up and fighting for the people of North West Leicestershire and delivering what is best for them."
You joined them in a fit of pique after being tossed out of the Tories for being a complete crank, and were there for less than a year, how difficult could it really have been?
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Our nuke, conventional military and intel ties alone mean that we will stick with the USA. We won’t dump Washington for Brussels. Believing otherwise is Remoaner delusion
The delusion is believing that a minority US public opinion is going to influence the decision making of a US President who has walked out on NATO.
Trump isn’t going to walk out on AUKUS. Nor is he gonna abandon Canada - it would be strategically impossible anyway
I can see him withdrawing from his commitment to mainland Europe - or at least making such scary noises he forces the EU to pay for its own defence
For a man of such apparent worldly experience your naivety with regard to Trump's intentions is quite remarkable.
Feels to me like the Democrats are maybe destroying democracy in order to save democracy
I seriously wonder if we will see an attempt on Trump’s life if he gets REALLY close to winning. Because, if you honestly think Trump is a new Hitler - and a dictator manque - as many honestly do - then assassination is the lesser crime than letting him seize power
Yes, remind us who coined "lock her up".
A reminder from Sept 2020.
Will you commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election?
They were playing a clip from his rally yesterday reacting to the ruling and despite him being an absolute C it’s was “good”. Not “good” for the world but he managed to deliver well a pile of rhetoric which likely plays to a huge swathe of Americans, especially Republicans, with a distrust of government and especially government.
To summarise he said that the government was actually coming for them but they attack him because he stands between the government and the people they are trying to “come for”. He made himself sound like a revolutionary for the people, their protector, the man who defends them from kings, tyrants and their rights being removed. They forget he’s a privileged plutocrat from a glitzy New York social scene and think of him as John Wayne riding the evil rancher out of town.
The average US voter isn’t thinking about constitutional details and facts they want to be told someone is protecting them from a threat real or imagined.
We often think that the US is like us because we speak the same language and there are certain cultural similarities but a huge amount of Americans, especially outside of “New England” and California are very removed from us with their views in the role of the state and have a culture of self-reliance we don’t have. There is often said to be a different culture between “Anglo Saxons” and mainland Europeans but the difference between most Americans and most Europeans (including us) is probably larger.
All of these legal issues feed his narrative and bolster his position and it’s really not great, exasperated by the political nature of prosecutors and courts in the US. Maybe if they had ignored him it would have achieved more.
Short of a stroke or death I think he will win. Maybe him winning will be better in the sense that he gets what he wants and his ego is fed and it deflates the narrative that unseen forces are manipulating the system to keep him out and so the system is corrupt. if he loses I think it will cause an even bigger rupture in the US.
I’d agree with all of that but I think what will be also important is the manner in which he loses - if it is a very tight race with margins in the thousands and there is the same questioning of ballots, particularly Mail-ins (which Jimmy Carter himself said were particularly detrimental), then things could explode.
Unfortunately, I think there are a fair few of Trump’s opponents in the US who believe that all means justify the end of stopping Trump - and, if that attitude prevails, it really is going to be a sh1tshow.
That’s why I reckon there will be an attempt on Trump’s life if he seems VERY VERY close to a second term
The democrats are working themselves up to it
And no, this does not diminish or detract from the fact that some Republicans also have violent intent and indeed a recent history of quasi-insurrection
America is going down a dark tunnel
That has been my view for a long time - that if you truly believe Trump is a threat to democracy, then logic would seem to dictate you will do anything - anything - to stop him getting into power.
It’s the old Hitler argument - if you could kill Hitler pre-power, would you do it? Most would say yes. Many of Trump’s opponents frame things in much the same way.
I agree with @kle4 that we are not there yet but if you have armed nut jobs turning up at Supreme Court justices’ homes armed and ready to kill them (which is where the Left’s logic is also heading them ie take out appointed for life Justices and you can get your own candidates in), I see it more likely than not that someone tries to assassinate Trump
Yep, I think the lawyers are in stepping away from the huge dog mess mode. They're now issuing denials that they advised Mone to deny links to Medpro.
I think the most amusing recent tale was Mone threatening the National with legal action if they stated that the made up claim that her Glasgow house was once lived in by Einstein was in fact made up. Frightening to think she was once a person of influence involved (however vestigially) in the government of the UK.
Mind, the different approaches by the legal eagles are striking.
Presumably it all depends when a lawyer is allowed to repeat the client's statements and when a lawyer isn't when they turn out to be untrue - but this is not in court, and lawyers don't often do this (to put it mildly), so I'm slightly surprised that it is happening at all. Am I missing something?
On the subject of falling inflation, it is a double-edged sword for the government. As inflation falls, they need to have a correspondingly smaller budget deficit, if they want to keep their promise of "reducing the debt".
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
The argument is about the UK ditching Europe and throwing in its lot with the US in the wake of a Trump decision to abandon NATO. Of course, in reality Putin is not going to march through the whole of Europe - though he could probably quite easily take the Baltic States, Moldova and absorb smaller C&E states into Moscow's direct sphere of influence.
Our nuke, conventional military and intel ties alone mean that we will stick with the USA. We won’t dump Washington for Brussels. Believing otherwise is Remoaner delusion
In my view it would be the end of five eyes. Trump cannot be trusted. I hope conversations with the other three members are along these lines. If Trump pulls out of Nato? I think it would still be in our interests to keep a reduced Nato going. Europe has the capability to defend the Baltics. Does it have the nerve?
Even without the US, Russia remains bogged down in Ukraine, is haemorrhaging money and soldiers. Putin might not care about the latter but he did revealingly overstate the number of troops he has in Ukraine by 50%. Many of them not being very top draw.
Various European countries are boosting their Ukraine support for 2024 - Nordics, Germany (x2) and Baltics especially.
At present Sunak has afaics said "same in cash terms" followed by lots of words about how much we have done.
The last numbers I saw had non-US support for Ukraine ahead of US support, but non-US does not have enough equipment in the short-term, perhaps.
Yes it does. No matter the majority size any government seat should be presumed to be very much at risk right now, and a modest Labour win is a cautious opening prediction.
Feels to me like the Democrats are maybe destroying democracy in order to save democracy
I seriously wonder if we will see an attempt on Trump’s life if he gets REALLY close to winning. Because, if you honestly think Trump is a new Hitler - and a dictator manque - as many honestly do - then assassination is the lesser crime than letting him seize power
Yes, remind us who coined "lock her up".
A reminder from Sept 2020.
Will you commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election?
They were playing a clip from his rally yesterday reacting to the ruling and despite him being an absolute C it’s was “good”. Not “good” for the world but he managed to deliver well a pile of rhetoric which likely plays to a huge swathe of Americans, especially Republicans, with a distrust of government and especially government.
To summarise he said that the government was actually coming for them but they attack him because he stands between the government and the people they are trying to “come for”. He made himself sound like a revolutionary for the people, their protector, the man who defends them from kings, tyrants and their rights being removed. They forget he’s a privileged plutocrat from a glitzy New York social scene and think of him as John Wayne riding the evil rancher out of town.
The average US voter isn’t thinking about constitutional details and facts they want to be told someone is protecting them from a threat real or imagined.
We often think that the US is like us because we speak the same language and there are certain cultural similarities but a huge amount of Americans, especially outside of “New England” and California are very removed from us with their views in the role of the state and have a culture of self-reliance we don’t have. There is often said to be a different culture between “Anglo Saxons” and mainland Europeans but the difference between most Americans and most Europeans (including us) is probably larger.
All of these legal issues feed his narrative and bolster his position and it’s really not great, exasperated by the political nature of prosecutors and courts in the US. Maybe if they had ignored him it would have achieved more.
Short of a stroke or death I think he will win. Maybe him winning will be better in the sense that he gets what he wants and his ego is fed and it deflates the narrative that unseen forces are manipulating the system to keep him out and so the system is corrupt. if he loses I think it will cause an even bigger rupture in the US.
I’d agree with all of that but I think what will be also important is the manner in which he loses - if it is a very tight race with margins in the thousands and there is the same questioning of ballots, particularly Mail-ins (which Jimmy Carter himself said were particularly detrimental), then things could explode.
Unfortunately, I think there are a fair few of Trump’s opponents in the US who believe that all means justify the end of stopping Trump - and, if that attitude prevails, it really is going to be a sh1tshow.
That’s why I reckon there will be an attempt on Trump’s life if he seems VERY VERY close to a second term
The democrats are working themselves up to it
And no, this does not diminish or detract from the fact that some Republicans also have violent intent and indeed a recent history of quasi-insurrection
America is going down a dark tunnel
That has been my view for a long time - that if you truly believe Trump is a threat to democracy, then logic would seem to dictate you will do anything - anything - to stop him getting into power.
It’s the old Hitler argument - if you could kill Hitler pre-power, would you do it? Most would say yes. Many of Trump’s opponents frame things in much the same way.
I agree with @kle4 that we are not there yet but if you have armed nut jobs turning up at Supreme Court justices’ homes armed and ready to kill them (which is where the Left’s logic is also heading them ie take out appointed for life Justices and you can get your own candidates in), I see it more likely than not that someone tries to assassinate Trump
The threat to life in the US is, and always has been, from the Right. There are far more people with guns supporting Trump than opposing him. Biden is at far more risk from people who think he stole the election from Trump. This idea of some gun wielding wokeist is the exact opposite of where the real danger is. Trump may, as he has before, incite violent insurrection
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
One side-effect of Ukraine blowing up Russian tanks and planes is that Russia will replace them with new, better tanks and planes. But you are right that in the medium term, a greater danger is posed by Russia interfering in our politics and cutting undersea cables carrying telecoms and electricity.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
Ally ourselves with Putin? Really?
It’s deeply unpleasant realpolitik
If Trump effectively abandons NATO who do we want as our ultimate ally? Mighty America, our superpower cousin (and Five Eyes friend) for the last century, or France and Germany and Bulgaria?
Let’s pray we are never forced to choose, but if forced to choose we should go with the USA, every time
Allying with someone as capricious and untrustworthy as Trump would be a terrible idea. To get to the UK, Putin has to pass through the whole of mainland Europe. Obviously and clearly, it is in our national interest to ensure that this is as hard as possible. A Putin-controlled UK makes next to no difference to a US that is prepared to accommodate him.
If you've ever wondered what it was like to live through the 1930's, now we know.
Wondering what British foreign and defence policy would be in a scenario where Trump let Ukraine fall and disbanded NATO.
We would probably have to ‘rearm’ and look for an alliance with the Germans and French, assuming that the latter hadn’t also fallen under Putins spell. Would we take in Ukrainian refugees?
How would the British right react? I can see Farage backing Trump, but there would be a dividing line with the Conservative right that went all in on Ukraine.
Either way a hard path for a new government to navigate.
In that event we should unite in a new Five Eyes/AUKUS pact with the USA
Europe will never spend enough to defend itself
What US interest is there in defending the UK but not France or Germany? That's the realpolitik.
American public sentiment sees Britain and Canada as the allies most worth defending
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Your faith in US public opinion is touching but, I would argue, entirely misplaced. A US public that is prepared to stand by and watch Putin trample through the whole of mainland Europe is not going to suddenly demand that the US commits troops and vast sums of money to prevent him crossing the Channel to us.
I’ve just shown you the actual polling, not what is in your head
The polling does not tell us anything about the clamour there would be to save the UK from a Putin who had already overrun the whole of Europe without the US lifting a finger.
Still not sure how Putin is supposed to overrun the whole of Europe when he has had his military smashed in Ukraine where he has somewhat easier logistical lines than pushing through Poland and onto Germany and France. Where will he be getting the millions of trained soldiers and weapons from?
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
One side-effect of Ukraine blowing up Russian tanks and planes is that Russia will replace them with new, better tanks and planes. But you are right that in the medium term, a greater danger is posed by Russia interfering in our politics and cutting undersea cables carrying telecoms and electricity.
Those new tanks and planes cost serious money. The Russian people are starting to feel the pain of their government running a war economy and that's a danger to Putin.
Abuse at ballet schools - it is shocking but thoroughly unsurprising. The ingredients are all there.
In passing, there’s a reason why ballet makes such an effective theme for horror (Suspiria being one of the greatest horror movies of all time).
The interesting (or predictable) thing about the story is that the schools point blank deny the complaints, and point to their outstanding OFSTED rating as justification. Which suggests how useful OFSTED is in terms of actual safeguarding.
It's like councils who went bankrupt having had audits show no issue years or sometimes months before.
Bureaucracy can, in fact, be very useful. But we have an epidemic of tick box cultures.
Nothing seems to work, even the processes designed to check if things work.
With that fall in inflation, it looks like the Bank of England may have erred again with interest rates.
I'm not convinced. Looks like the decline isn't especially broad based. Underlying momentum in services is still too high for comfort. Things might look better in a couple of releases but right now I wouldn't be rushing to cut rates.
Since about April, inflation numbers have come in pretty consistently, above expectations. Producer input and output prices are now falling. The B o E should certainly cut rates.
Comments
There is a risk of deflation coming down the line.
On any savings I have, if they mature, I am locking in as good a deal as I can.
ASLEF have said they will continue to hold out. They think Labour will yield to their demands. The Junior Doctors have already said they won't settle in England for what they settled for in Scotland because, Tories. But that was a few months back.
That's what happens when the public stops believing in democracy and politicians see loss as existential, reasonably or otherwise. Things break down even on the far less egregious side.
I don't think the ballot decision is really related to that though. There are lots of procedural rules about eligibility and elections, so it's not an outrage in principle for someone to fall foul of that. If a rule says X then thats that even if someone is popular. But I'd be in the camp that says lack of conviction for insurrection will ensure the Supreme Court overturn the decusion pretty sharpish, even were it not conservative controlled.
Perhaps the canny justices will even do that whilst shooting down Trump's appeal in another case that presidents are above the law.
The suggestion has been that Biden will announce his standing down very late, just before the Convention, and let the DNC bigwigs nominate Newsom as the candidate behind closed doors.
...Therefore, to maintain the status quo pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court, we stay our ruling until January 4, 2024 (the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot). If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot..
This might well also accelerate the court's consideration of Trump's (IMO absurd) immunity defence.
A bit beige. A political Tim Henman.
I don’t believe Trump will go against that. It is highly possible he will abandon mainland Europe
At the same time our multiple military and diplomatic ties to the USA - from Five Eyes to our nuclear deterrent - mean we are dependent on America (and they are dependent on us to a lesser extent) which again makes the choice obvious. Stick with Washington
Trump is not guaranteed to be convicted in any of the cases but obviously he doesn't want to take any chances and his legal strategy has openly been to delay everything by any means necessary no matter how ludicrous, so he can win the election, which would see most cases drop and neuter the rest. It could work.
An amenable judge has ensured that in the simplest case, and endless motions and appeals he hopes will achieve it in most of the others (the Georgia case was already starting too late).
Perhaps forcing a decision on some of his delaying appeals was worth the Colorado court making a decision they can be confident will be overturned.
They can slide on that though if the state party are allowed to shift their primary or can switch to a caucus or something.
I hope the civil service are doing the hard yards, doing serious scenario planning and that the LoO is getting fully briefed.
However "totalitarian sewage" is a bizarre claim. I suspect the tweeter saying that is more than a little unbalanced. Better not to amplify such stuff than advertise it.
So I think Trump pulling out cannot be rules out and would be very unpleasant.
“The United Kingdom is seen as the United States’ greatest ally
Kathy Frankovic
March 08, 2021, 1:45 PM GMT+0
One-third of Americans think of the United Kingdom as the United States’ greatest ally (32%), according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll conducted February 27 - March 2.
YouGov asked an open question on the topic, allowing respondents to write in the name of whatever country they wanted in response. Democrats (34%) and Republicans (30%) are similarly likely to name the United Kingdom as the United States’ closest friend”
https://today.yougov.com/international/articles/34566-united-kingdom-seen-united-states-greatest-ally?redirect_from=/topics/international/articles-reports/2021/03/08/united-kingdom-seen-united-states-greatest-ally
I don’t think Trump will want to upset Americans by severing ties with the UK
I can see him being ruthlessly mean to the Germans, etc
After all, he doesn't need the CO votes for the nomination, and won't get them in the general election.
It is about whether a President is an Officer of the US, subject to the US Constitution.
I'd see it a parallel question with whether the Presidential Immunity in Office extends to criminal acts carried out by the President, which Trump has been asserting repeatedly as his key defence.
The core question is whether a President is above the law or not.
I think it was Judge Chutkan who noted in one of her rulings that 'Presidents are not Kings, and are subject to law.'
If Trump is not subject to law and constitution, imo it's undermining the whole reason why, in the US mind, they fought the War of Independence.
Perhaps Short-Term Rishi should try saving his financial backside by putting a tax back on tea consumption in the USA?
I think he could do pretty much anything and his grip over the base is so strong they would back it. Having won a second term despite all his legal issues he'd probably see himself as politically invincible.
Find a way to support American defence sector jobs, while not “sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine”, and it becomes more popular. Perhaps a load of obsolete kit could be depreciated to almost nothing and sold to the UK, for example?
In the medium term, Europe is going to need to learn to defend itself, and that’s going to cost money.
As for the cash in hand - yes it happens! I worked with a fairly senior engineer for a major car company. He spent his "days off" helping his mate who was a builder - I'm fairly sure on a cash basis.
This precipitates an early consideration of those issues, which might otherwise have been delayed.
I got a regular saver with the Coventry at 7% a year and one with Lloyds at 6.25% a year. Very pleased with both. Put the max into them both each month.
I have been able to renew in September with Kent Reliance at 6.17% for 2 years. Those rates are now nearer to 4.9% for 2 years.
Raisin usually have some pretty good rates. I have some money with them. Sharia compliant accounts are worth looking at too.
The actual issue is, as you note, about the standard applied in making this specific decision, which looks rather low for such a serious matter.
And I think the Supreme Court like being in control of things.
I think it is precedented for them to intervene directly, in important questions. Might they do this here?
(In one of the other Trump cases - I think the Washington DC Election Fraud one - the Prosecutor has appealed to both the local supreme court, and the USA Supreme Court to intervene directly.)
It's a bit bizarre to talk about realpolitik and then to argue for a UK defence strategy based on an old poll showing that a minority of Americans see the UK as the US's biggest ally.
The threat to the UK from Putin is nuclear and sneaky subterfuge.
We all need any incoming government to have a chance to establish itself before dealing with the fallout of the US election.
If the UK election was in October, and especially if the result was close (which is possible IMO), it would be hugely challenging for the new administration simultaneously to establish itself and deal with, what could be, the biggest Foreign policy challenge of the decade.
Better to get our election out of the way
Sorry lads, you're going to have to hoor some piece of England's heritage if you want the marines coming in.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/19/lawyer-apologises-for-saying-michelle-mone-was-not-linked-to-ppe-firm
They are, after all, just politicians in fancy dress, but they are at least pretty intelligent, and not entirely in sync with their political allies, since they a) can take a longer term view, b) have a joint interest in advancing the Court as an institution , c) can be occasionally independent because they cannot realistically be punished, politically or otherwise, for their rulings.
There was a crazy increase in natural gas prices and now they have come down again. Not quite to where they were before but manageable. Does much else matter really. So much heating and electricity in shops, factories, offices must come from gas.
It’s just that if you get a pay rise, most of it disappears into the maw.
From talking to people, the marginal rate stuff hits home on pay rise day - they fire up one of the online calculators to work out how much extra they will have. Or not.
We're just arguing about the shape of the curve. From your postings, you think the peak is at a higher percentage than we do. You might even be right (although you're probably not), but that doesn't mean their isn't a Laffer curve.
I think the most amusing recent tale was Mone threatening the National with legal action if they stated that the made up claim that her Glasgow house was once lived in by Einstein was in fact made up. Frightening to think she was once a person of influence involved (however vestigially) in the government of the UK.
Which suggests how useful OFSTED is in terms of actual safeguarding.
On the US/UK structures - the nukes are interesting. The US and U.K. programs are interrwined to the point that Chuck Hansen and others suggested that instead of shared information, the US and the UK build nuclear weapons jointly, with design features from both programs in combined designs. For example, the U.K. introduced the Americans to spherical secondaries (one of the reasons it took so long to get the U.K. H bomb to work).
While the factories are separate - ownership of the designs would be interesting.
I can see him withdrawing from his commitment to mainland Europe - or at least making such scary noises he forces the EU to pay for its own defence
The Trump Tower of London.
Balimmoral
guidance is unclear whether it covers dividends as income. Also, if the company wants me to upload documents to provide proof of income, the dividend payments have not been made over equal time amounts. Any advice as to what would be best to do?
Bureaucracy can, in fact, be very useful. But we have an epidemic of tick box cultures.
Nothing seems to work, even the processes designed to check if things work.
https://x.com/abridgen/status/1737394674359214324
Even without the US, Russia remains bogged down in Ukraine, is haemorrhaging money and soldiers. Putin might not care about the latter but he did revealingly overstate the number of troops he has in Ukraine by 50%. Many of them not being very top draw.
As this article points out https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67760641.amp - earn £110,000 and living in Scotland you will be being taxed £4096 more than elsewhere in the uk.
Have the Tories offered to take him back?
You joined them in a fit of pique after being tossed out of the Tories for being a complete crank, and were there for less than a year, how difficult could it really have been?
It’s the old Hitler argument - if you could kill Hitler pre-power, would you do it? Most would say yes. Many of Trump’s opponents frame things in much the same way.
I agree with @kle4 that we are not there yet but if you have armed nut jobs turning up at Supreme Court justices’ homes armed and ready to kill them (which is where the Left’s logic is also heading them ie take out appointed for life Justices and you can get your own candidates in), I see it more likely than not that someone tries to assassinate Trump
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1737213359995441496
Looks credible.
Presumably it all depends when a lawyer is allowed to repeat the client's statements and when a lawyer isn't when they turn out to be untrue - but this is not in court, and lawyers don't often do this (to put it mildly), so I'm slightly surprised that it is happening at all. Am I missing something?
As inflation falls, they need to have a correspondingly smaller budget deficit, if they want to keep their promise of "reducing the debt".
At present Sunak has afaics said "same in cash terms" followed by lots of words about how much we have done.
The last numbers I saw had non-US support for Ukraine ahead of US support, but non-US does not have enough equipment in the short-term, perhaps.
I doubt it will be that close in the end.
Must Finish Header….
Risk of penile fractures rises at Christmas, doctors find
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/dec/20/risk-of-penile-fractures-rises-at-christmas-doctors-find