Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
Mr. Divvie, given there's Ukraine, Russia, the civil war between two differentarmies in Sudan, Ethiopia teetering on the brink, Israel/Gaza, and so on, I'm going to be very controversial and suggest the notion the UK is the second most miserable place on Earth might just be silly.
I fear that insisting that we’re actually not as miserable as countries afflicted by civil war, famine and area bombing by a vengeful neighbour might not be a big winner on the reassurance front.
Well, there's certainly a shortage of unpatriotic sausages that aren't mostly made of rusks.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
Mr. Divvie, given there's Ukraine, Russia, the civil war between two differentarmies in Sudan, Ethiopia teetering on the brink, Israel/Gaza, and so on, I'm going to be very controversial and suggest the notion the UK is the second most miserable place on Earth might just be silly.
I fear that insisting that we’re actually not as miserable as countries afflicted by civil war, famine and area bombing by a vengeful neighbour might not be a big winner on the reassurance front.
Well, there's certainly a shortage of unpatriotic sausages that aren't mostly made of rusks.
Anybody still think Richi will "lead" the party to oblivion in the Autumn?
In my view, someone has to become the Tory Kinnock - a more-or-less unknown taking the reins with the intent of riding out (at least one) defeat and remaining leader.
If it ends up being someone tainted by association with this era, the Tories are consigning themselves to a long time out of office.
One thing I haven't seen discussed is the possibility that a current MP stands against Sunak on the basis that "there's nothing we can do to avoid a terrible election; we need to be honest with the voters, and start rebuilding our party NOW, not waiting until after the inevitable".
But Kinnock did far more than just that - he mapped a plausible path out of the weeds in which his party had become entangled, forced them to listen to some hard truths, and began to stitch together a new coalition of voting groups.
The Tories are nowhere near ready for any of that. A fresh face with no ideological baggage is just going to be trampled over by one or more of the rival factions.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
Was Kinnock obviously ready for that in 1983, though? On the other hand, we have a situation where we've had a purge of the Tory moderates as the preamble to this situation, rather than the NEC's proscription of Militant which presaged Kinnock's leadership.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
I cannot see her surviving the cull. Her last chance of becoming PM comes from challenging Sunak post May.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
She'll need to hold her seat first. She needs a 6% swing back on current polling to achieve that. Something like a 37-31 result on UNS. Even then I can't see her winning with the membership unless she goes full Tonto.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
What's remarkable is how Kinnock's reputation has grown over time. Was regarded as a risible joke by most when he was actually doing the stuff similar people now admire him for.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
She'll need to hold her seat first. She needs a 6% swing back on current polling to achieve that. Something like a 37-31 result on UNS. Even then I can't see her winning with the membership unless she goes full Tonto.
She clearly has a sizeable personal vote, as she has increased her majority at each GE since 2010. So she could be one of the "surprise survivors".
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
She'll need to hold her seat first. She needs a 6% swing back on current polling to achieve that. Something like a 37-31 result on UNS. Even then I can't see her winning with the membership unless she goes full Tonto.
Just needs to visit a few pubs holding a sword and the 50+ male vote will rise to the occassion.
What's remarkable is how Kinnock's reputation has grown over time.
I think it is easier to see the wicket on which he was batting, 40 years on. More of a historical perspective, and less of the contemporary media coverage. That said, his failings (and how they influenced Tony Blair) are just as clear.
What's remarkable is how Kinnock's reputation has grown over time. Was regarded as a risible joke by most when he was actually doing the stuff similar people now admire him for.
People don't like divided parties, so at the time his taking on militant left him open to attack from both sides, it is only with hindsight that people saw the payoff from that.
Excitement as former multiple winner Lucie Plevova returns to the competition, competing for Japan with her new Collie…
..not as good as her classic routines with her former dog Jump, but surely will give the UK a run for our money… a fast high-jumping end to the routine..surely first place is coming..
Mr. Divvie, given there's Ukraine, Russia, the civil war between two differentarmies in Sudan, Ethiopia teetering on the brink, Israel/Gaza, and so on, I'm going to be very controversial and suggest the notion the UK is the second most miserable place on Earth might just be silly.
I fear that insisting that we’re actually not as miserable as countries afflicted by civil war, famine and area bombing by a vengeful neighbour might not be a big winner on the reassurance front.
Well, there's certainly a shortage of unpatriotic sausages that aren't mostly made of rusks.
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
There's a real generation gap - in my experience older people do no realise how much housing affordability has changed - e.g. my relatively attached to society mother was pressuring me to buy a house now I'm a higher rate payer. It wasn't until I sat down and showed her how much times income her first flat would have been on her inflation adjusted wage now that she got it.
FWIW the self-appointed spokesmen of pensioners often do the whole group a disservice by coming across as exceptionally selfish. Moaning about a tax they're already exempted for getting reduced while describing an 8% increase in the state pension as nothing is just detestable.
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
The pensioners that did win the war, now nearly all dead, were generally poorly treated in retirement - little private pension, meagre state pension. So the current situation is a result of trying to correct this injustice, the beneficiaries being those who were born in the 30's - 50's, who were too young to fight in the war.
I've said a few times that some pensioners are doing incredibly well when you have state pension + defined benefit pension + interest from savings + no mortgage The marginal tax rate on all that income up to 50k is 15%.
However this is not by any means the majority of pensioners- many of whom rely solely on the state pension.
Link state pension to earnings only. Boost pension credit by 10% and retain the triple lock on it. Merge NI and IT.
Very sensible, but with the fury from labour at the very idea of abolishing NI into one tax rate just confirms it will not happen in the forceable future
Fury from Tories like me too, NI should be ringfenced and funding the state pension, JSA and some healthcare. Without NI we lose the contributions based welfare element, including JSA which you have to have paid in enough NI as an employee for
You simply do not understand the concept
At present workers are double taxed whilst others including pensioners are not which is simply unfair and a tax on jobs
The way to equalise the tax is to, over a number of years, reduce NI while increasing standard rate but also increase personal allowance to shield poorer pensioners
That's what makes me suspicious that NI abolition won't happen. Cutting the NI rate is one thing, but increasing the basic rate of income tax? Much less likely. And there's no chance of cutting government spending enough to abolish NI that way.
My hunch is that Hunt hoped to get as much of an electoral boost form an NI cut as from an income tax cut, but more cheaply. Everything else is making a virtue of necessity- much like the non-dom raid.
What's remarkable is how Kinnock's reputation has grown over time. Was regarded as a risible joke by most when he was actually doing the stuff similar people now admire him for.
Was on Today this week re an anniversary of the Miner's strike. His anger at the stupidity of Scargill was still palpable. Clearly thought that with more intelligent leadership the strike could have been won. But what then?
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
As an aside to all of good points you make, I've never understood complaints about trains in that regard - granted, I only use a train maybe 20 times a year, but it's been very rare in the last 20 years when a train was more than a minute or two late for me.
Late trains are not uncommon. They travel long distances and the potential for delays due to violent passengers, signal failures, repairs, breakdown (rare), trespassers or suicides on the line. When I travel I never take the last train, always have two alternate routes written down. The taxi at the other end is booked for fifteen minutes after the train is due to arrive to soak up minor delays. Delays of one to two hours are less common but they do happen and from memory there have been two this year. Within the past two years there has been one case where I have had to abandon my journey and get a hotel room. Bus replacement services are rare if you avoid travelling on the weekend.
(Viewcode travels hundreds of miles a week by train and loathes it)
I've done about 1200 miles in the past week. There've been two appreciable delays - one where a person taken ill on the inbound train delayed our departure from St Pancras by a couple of minutes, enough that we missed a signalling slot and further delays built up as a result. Total delay was 8 minutes on a two hour journey.
The other was caused by a greater than usual number of people needing to use the ramp to board or depart the train. We were only 3 mins late at the penultimate stop, but that meant that our platform was occupied when we got to Euston so had to wait ages for another to become free, for a total delay of 14 minutes.
Both demonstrate well one of our major problems: we're running the system so close to full capacity that there's barely any margin for error - so the effects of any problems tend to multiply.
We've skimped on the infrastructure, and are now paying the price.
On Donelan, it will suit her and Sunak that most attention is focused on whether taxpayer money should be used to pay her libel costs and fees, as it distracts from her original sin.
That sin, of course, was putting in the public domain an unwarranted, unresearched and untrue allegation that two academics were Hamas sympathisers and should therefore be sacked from their roles. Regardless of the financial issue, she should have been sacked for that original sin. It really is disgraceful behaviour that makes her unsuitable for a ministerial post, and probably unsuited to being an MP. It's equivalent to Lee Anderson's allegation about Sadiq Khan, for which he was suspended from the Tory Party.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
She'll need to hold her seat first. She needs a 6% swing back on current polling to achieve that. Something like a 37-31 result on UNS. Even then I can't see her winning with the membership unless she goes full Tonto.
Just needs to visit a few pubs holding a sword and the 50+ male vote will rise to the occassion.
And complain about SNP-facilitated (allegedly) rats in Glasgow while carefully ignoring the Pompey rodent problem.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
Does the DE have the thickest readership in the country ? As for Badenoch, she’s clearly delusional and needs to seek help .
Destroying the Tory party is surely a Brexit bonus worth billions.
Careful what you wish for.
I can image a decade long tussle between a Lib-Dem-expanding-rightwards (2010 with master and servant reversed) and a Con-Refuk party to be the non-Labour party, because our system only really allows for two big national parties.
One of those would be fairly congenial for me (and I suspect you), but the other would be blooming scary.
While this happens, Labour will keep.winning without breaking sweat. That might work OK if they use the time to do the messy but necessary retooling of the country.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
If the GE is like current polls both she and Badenoch will lose their seats.
Anyway Mordaunt was this week saying that Donelan was an honourable person because she did not take a redundancy payment for losing a previous Cabinet position where she had been in post for 36 hours.
Why Mordaunt is rated at all beats me. Another empty vessel with no achievement to her name.
An entertaining fishing-themed routine from Czechia goes into second, and the next fast-paced routine from Switzerland with some great distance handling of Yoko the Collie pips that for second. But it looks like the UK is destined to win…
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
The pensioners that did win the war, now nearly all dead, were generally poorly treated in retirement - little private pension, meagre state pension. So the current situation is a result of trying to correct this injustice, the beneficiaries being those who were born in the 30's - 50's, who were too young to fight in the war.
I've said a few times that some pensioners are doing incredibly well when you have state pension + defined benefit pension + interest from savings + no mortgage The marginal tax rate on all that income up to 50k is 15%.
However this is not by any means the majority of pensioners- many of whom rely solely on the state pension.
Link state pension to earnings only. Boost pension credit by 10% and retain the triple lock on it. Merge NI and IT.
Very sensible, but with the fury from labour at the very idea of abolishing NI into one tax rate just confirms it will not happen in the forceable future
I think that's perhaps a misperception - Labour are acknbowledging the very real fear that abolishing NI means abolishing the state pension. The two have gone together for half a century, so it's not surprising.
My local Facebook group is apoplectic at the cut in NICs, demonstrating almost heroic levels of cognitive dissonance.
They are simultaneously claiming the cut in current NICs will mean their state pensions are now unfunded, while also suggesting that their "pot" is about to be raided.
This is rural/Tory Scotland, so I'm surprised that the culprit is.... Jeremy Hunt. There is a chance this is May on Social Care MK2. They are that furious.
This is a bit like the panic on PB a couple of days ago about licensing in Hackney, where everyone convinced themselves that no new venues could stay open past midnight. It isn't actually correct as there is no 'blanket ban', just higher hurdles that licensees have to pass in order to demonstrate no anti social behaviour issues, given the existing saturation, if they want to open after midnight (as I understand it). This is the problem unfortunately with the internet - it is full of low quality information. At least in the past the misinformation was everywhere but under control.
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
As an aside to all of good points you make, I've never understood complaints about trains in that regard - granted, I only use a train maybe 20 times a year, but it's been very rare in the last 20 years when a train was more than a minute or two late for me.
Late trains are not uncommon. They travel long distances and the potential for delays due to violent passengers, signal failures, repairs, breakdown (rare), trespassers or suicides on the line. When I travel I never take the last train, always have two alternate routes written down. The taxi at the other end is booked for fifteen minutes after the train is due to arrive to soak up minor delays. Delays of one to two hours are less common but they do happen and from memory there have been two this year. Within the past two years there has been one case where I have had to abandon my journey and get a hotel room. Bus replacement services are rare if you avoid travelling on the weekend.
(Viewcode travels hundreds of miles a week by train and loathes it)
I've done about 1200 miles in the past week. There've been two appreciable delays - one where a person taken ill on the inbound train delayed our departure from St Pancras by a couple of minutes, enough that we missed a signalling slot and further delays built up as a result. Total delay was 8 minutes on a two hour journey.
The other was caused by a greater than usual number of people needing to use the ramp to board or depart the train. We were only 3 mins late at the penultimate stop, but that meant that our platform was occupied when we got to Euston so had to wait ages for another to become free, for a total delay of 14 minutes.
Both demonstrate well one of our major problems: we're running the system so close to full capacity that there's barely any margin for error - so the effects of any problems tend to multiply.
We've skimped on the infrastructure, and are now paying the price.
I've had two significant delays recently. 1 a train to stansted terminating at Bishops Stortford requiring a £50 taxi (split with 4 other random people) in order to get the flight; and 2. Train back from London having multiple problems leading to 1 hour plus delay, I think the problem was there was no driver for 40 minutes or so, and then it terminated at the station before mine, requiring a 20 min wait for the next train. All pretty normal really.
The one other comment I would make about the trains in the UK is that the system for refunding delays is ahead of other countries. Even through the trains in Finland and objectively better and more enjoyable to travel on there is no comparable system of delay repay. Ultimately in the UK if you are disciplined about claiming refunds then you can claim back a significant proportion of your annual spend on train tickets.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
If the GE is like current polls both she and Badenoch will lose their seats.
Anyway Mordaunt was this week saying that Donelan was an honourable person because she did not take a redundancy payment for losing a previous Cabinet position where she had been in post for 36 hours.
Why Mordaunt is rated at all beats me. Another empty vessel with no achievement to her name.
If she survives, and its a fairly big "if" I think she would be a good LOTO. She has presence and some wit when on her feet in the Commons. She doesn't have the intellect or the ability to be a PM or even a senior Cabinet minister but that will really not matter so far as the next leader of the Tories is concerned and quite possibly for the leader after that either.
I think, looking at the talent puddle, they could do worse. But first she has to hold her seat.
Somebody said that Rishi Sunak sounds like the man on the self-checkout at Tesco and now I cannot unhear it.
"Thanks for shopping at Tesco."
"Unexpected voter in polling area."
Rishi also has a similarity to Will from the Inbetweeners.
"Nice briefcase."
Sunak is the class nerd in a nice suit. We all know it.
Nothing wrong with nerds. I’m one. But I don’t think the Great British Public want someone emanating such powerful nerd vibes leading the country.
His popularity with sections of the Tory Party is explained by the fact that it is full of childhood nerds who’ve made a few quid and delight in wrecking the lives of the ‘popular kids’ by getting into government and decimating public services and cratering the economy.
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
As an aside to all of good points you make, I've never understood complaints about trains in that regard - granted, I only use a train maybe 20 times a year, but it's been very rare in the last 20 years when a train was more than a minute or two late for me.
Late trains are not uncommon. They travel long distances and the potential for delays due to violent passengers, signal failures, repairs, breakdown (rare), trespassers or suicides on the line. When I travel I never take the last train, always have two alternate routes written down. The taxi at the other end is booked for fifteen minutes after the train is due to arrive to soak up minor delays. Delays of one to two hours are less common but they do happen and from memory there have been two this year. Within the past two years there has been one case where I have had to abandon my journey and get a hotel room. Bus replacement services are rare if you avoid travelling on the weekend.
(Viewcode travels hundreds of miles a week by train and loathes it)
I've done about 1200 miles in the past week. There've been two appreciable delays - one where a person taken ill on the inbound train delayed our departure from St Pancras by a couple of minutes, enough that we missed a signalling slot and further delays built up as a result. Total delay was 8 minutes on a two hour journey.
The other was caused by a greater than usual number of people needing to use the ramp to board or depart the train. We were only 3 mins late at the penultimate stop, but that meant that our platform was occupied when we got to Euston so had to wait ages for another to become free, for a total delay of 14 minutes.
Both demonstrate well one of our major problems: we're running the system so close to full capacity that there's barely any margin for error - so the effects of any problems tend to multiply.
We've skimped on the infrastructure, and are now paying the price.
You say you've had two appreciable delays and then tell us about two minor delays!
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
As an aside to all of good points you make, I've never understood complaints about trains in that regard - granted, I only use a train maybe 20 times a year, but it's been very rare in the last 20 years when a train was more than a minute or two late for me.
Late trains are not uncommon. They travel long distances and the potential for delays due to violent passengers, signal failures, repairs, breakdown (rare), trespassers or suicides on the line. When I travel I never take the last train, always have two alternate routes written down. The taxi at the other end is booked for fifteen minutes after the train is due to arrive to soak up minor delays. Delays of one to two hours are less common but they do happen and from memory there have been two this year. Within the past two years there has been one case where I have had to abandon my journey and get a hotel room. Bus replacement services are rare if you avoid travelling on the weekend.
(Viewcode travels hundreds of miles a week by train and loathes it)
I've done about 1200 miles in the past week. There've been two appreciable delays - one where a person taken ill on the inbound train delayed our departure from St Pancras by a couple of minutes, enough that we missed a signalling slot and further delays built up as a result. Total delay was 8 minutes on a two hour journey.
The other was caused by a greater than usual number of people needing to use the ramp to board or depart the train. We were only 3 mins late at the penultimate stop, but that meant that our platform was occupied when we got to Euston so had to wait ages for another to become free, for a total delay of 14 minutes.
Both demonstrate well one of our major problems: we're running the system so close to full capacity that there's barely any margin for error - so the effects of any problems tend to multiply.
We've skimped on the infrastructure, and are now paying the price.
I've had two significant delays recently. 1 a train to stansted terminating at Bishops Stortford requiring a £50 taxi (split with 4 other random people) in order to get the flight; and 2. Train back from London having multiple problems leading to 1 hour plus delay, I think the problem was there was no driver for 40 minutes or so, and then it terminated at the station before mine, requiring a 20 min wait for the next train. All pretty normal really.
Now we're talking. Proper delays with decent Delay Repay payouts.
Why doesn't Rishi Sunak just make a new law that declares Brexit is a massive success and he's already won the next election with an 100 seat majority?
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
If the GE is like current polls both she and Badenoch will lose their seats.
Anyway Mordaunt was this week saying that Donelan was an honourable person because she did not take a redundancy payment for losing a previous Cabinet position where she had been in post for 36 hours.
Why Mordaunt is rated at all beats me. Another empty vessel with no achievement to her name.
If she survives, and its a fairly big "if" I think she would be a good LOTO. She has presence and some wit when on her feet in the Commons. She doesn't have the intellect or the ability to be a PM or even a senior Cabinet minister but that will really not matter so far as the next leader of the Tories is concerned and quite possibly for the leader after that either.
I think, looking at the talent puddle, they could do worse. But first she has to hold her seat.
The combination of presence, wit, and being quick on their feet was shared by her predecessor in the role, Jacob Rees-Mogg - but no-one is claiming he should be leader!
Mordaunt's problem is a lack of political base. People say she's "woke", but she's really not - she'd have been thoroughly mainstream in May's cabinet, and nothing out of the ordinary even under Boris. She's long been a hard Brexiteer, but then the same can be said for all the other potential candidates apart from Truss.
What else is there to her? Being a naval reservist, perhaps - admirable, but by appearing to have over-egged her role in the past she can't really rely on any upside from that.
Otherwise, there's not much to her that I can see. Hoping to base a leadership campaign on not being an alt-right conspiracy theorist seems a bit thin. She could do with finding an actual policy or two to champion.
The thing about the Michelle Donelan £15k payment is that this will have cost the taxpayer much more than that. There will be a cost from a government legal team having to deal with this. We know Donelan had civil servants working on the non-issue. The UKRI had to conduct an entirely unnecessary investigation. Two publicly-funded academics had to waste their time dealing with the false accusation. That will all add up to way more than £15k.
I think the whole story is just bizarre. If she's skint, which I find hard to believe, couldn't Rishi lend or even give her the money? How could they not see it was PR poison?
That said, nobody mentioned it on the doorsteps this morning. Anecdata: 5 of us in Godalming for a couple of hours. Perceptible drift to Labour, but nothing huge, and pensioners generally staying loyal to the Tories - in fact, one said "I always voted Labour when I was working, but the Tories seem to look after us old folk better." She was curious about Reform, though, and said she might give them a try. Some LD->Lab swing, which as this is achetypal Blue Wall is striking. Some personal votes for Hunt, who is acknowledged as being visible in the constituency despite his other commitments.
Somebody said that Rishi Sunak sounds like the man on the self-checkout at Tesco and now I cannot unhear it.
"Thanks for shopping at Tesco."
"Unexpected voter in polling area."
Rishi also has a similarity to Will from the Inbetweeners.
"Nice briefcase."
Sunak is the class nerd in a nice suit. We all know it.
Complete rubbish. His suits are generally terrible.
I think they'd have been seen as fashionable, what, 7 or 8 years ago.
He's one of those late Gen X types who got away with dressing like a millennial for a while, but then didn't notice when the zeitgeist changed. You half expect him to turn up wearing skinny jeans and sporting an undercut...
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
On some level you have to admire the breathtakingly brazen lie.
Badenoch = the tory Corbyn
She had a small opportunity to stake out a claim to be an effective different Tory - one with an eye on creating a party fit for the future. She has completely blown it. As I said last July here (https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/07/18/a-missed-opportunity/) she's another one "with more ego than achievement to their name".
The post election leadership seems to be edging back towards Mordaunt again. Hers to lose I think.
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
If the GE is like current polls both she and Badenoch will lose their seats.
Anyway Mordaunt was this week saying that Donelan was an honourable person because she did not take a redundancy payment for losing a previous Cabinet position where she had been in post for 36 hours.
Why Mordaunt is rated at all beats me. Another empty vessel with no achievement to her name.
If she survives, and its a fairly big "if" I think she would be a good LOTO. She has presence and some wit when on her feet in the Commons. She doesn't have the intellect or the ability to be a PM or even a senior Cabinet minister but that will really not matter so far as the next leader of the Tories is concerned and quite possibly for the leader after that either.
I think, looking at the talent puddle, they could do worse. But first she has to hold her seat.
The combination of presence, wit, and being quick on their feet was shared by her predecessor in the role, Jacob Rees-Mogg - but no-one is claiming he should be leader!
Mordaunt's problem is a lack of political base. People say she's "woke", but she's really not - she'd have been thoroughly mainstream in May's cabinet, and nothing out of the ordinary even under Boris. She's long been a hard Brexiteer, but then the same can be said for all the other potential candidates apart from Truss.
What else is there to her? Being a naval reservist, perhaps - admirable, but by appearing to have over-egged her role in the past she can't really rely on any upside from that.
Otherwise, there's not much to her that I can see. Hoping to base a leadership campaign on not being an alt-right conspiracy theorist seems a bit thin. She could do with finding an actual policy or two to champion.
Conservatives don't need policies where they're going.
If the Conservatives want to minimise their time in opposition, their best bet is probably a Kinnock- someone who can speak and keep the morale up, whilst working out why they lost and what the party is for now. But also making space for the next PM in waiting. If the Conservatives are lucky, they're on the candidates' list at the moment, but otherwise unknown.
I'm not holding my breath that the party will do this.
There should be a German compound noun for the pleasing moment when a country fulfils a glib preconception
I’ve just experienced such a moment. I’m having breakfast at Medellin airport and for the third time on this trip I’ve paused while drinking a coffee and thought: Wow, that is great coffee
Three times cannot be coincidence. Colombia has great coffee
Cue: German compound noun describing this revelation
There should be a German compound noun for the pleasing moment when a country fulfils a glib preconception
I’ve just experienced such a moment. I’m having breakfast at Medellin airport and for the third time on this trip I’ve paused while drinking a coffee and thought: Wow, that is great coffee
Three times cannot be coincidence. Colombia has great coffee
Cue: German compound noun describing this revelation
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
The pensioners that did win the war, now nearly all dead, were generally poorly treated in retirement - little private pension, meagre state pension. So the current situation is a result of trying to correct this injustice, the beneficiaries being those who were born in the 30's - 50's, who were too young to fight in the war.
I've said a few times that some pensioners are doing incredibly well when you have state pension + defined benefit pension + interest from savings + no mortgage The marginal tax rate on all that income up to 50k is 15%.
However this is not by any means the majority of pensioners- many of whom rely solely on the state pension.
Link state pension to earnings only. Boost pension credit by 10% and retain the triple lock on it. Merge NI and IT.
Very sensible, but with the fury from labour at the very idea of abolishing NI into one tax rate just confirms it will not happen in the forceable future
Fury from Tories like me too, NI should be ringfenced and funding the state pension, JSA and some healthcare. Without NI we lose the contributions based welfare element, including JSA which you have to have paid in enough NI as an employee for
Contributions have not been the basis of the welfare state for many years.
Nothing is ring fenced. Merging NI into IT is just admiting the truth.
FWIW... My 6 Nations predictions for this weekend:
Italy-Scotland: Italy will be fired up by their result against France and will have been disappointed with their missed kick at the end of the game, and will be trying to go one better today. Scotland will be equally happy with their result against England, although they were lucky to scrape wins against France & Wales. This game could go either way but I am going to go with Italy 13 Scotland 18.
England-Ireland. England will try to steamroller England, but Ireland are simply too good at the moment and l expect them to ride out the early English pressure and then dominate the game. England 12 Ireland 27.
Wales-France. Wales have been steadily improving throughout the tournament, despite not actually winning, and I expect the improvements to continue today. But France will be hurting after last weeks match, and will make things awkward for Wales. This game will be close but think that Wales will finally win a game Wales 21 France 15
Pedantry insists that I point out that Scotland lost to France.
You are of course correct - i was just checking who was paying attention....but I stand by my prediction
Mr. Divvie, given there's Ukraine, Russia, the civil war between two differentarmies in Sudan, Ethiopia teetering on the brink, Israel/Gaza, and so on, I'm going to be very controversial and suggest the notion the UK is the second most miserable place on Earth might just be silly.
I fear that insisting that we’re actually not as miserable as countries afflicted by civil war, famine and area bombing by a vengeful neighbour might not be a big winner on the reassurance front.
Well, there's certainly a shortage of unpatriotic sausages that aren't mostly made of rusks.
There should be a German compound noun for the pleasing moment when a country fulfils a glib preconception
I’ve just experienced such a moment. I’m having breakfast at Medellin airport and for the third time on this trip I’ve paused while drinking a coffee and thought: Wow, that is great coffee
Three times cannot be coincidence. Colombia has great coffee
Cue: German compound noun describing this revelation
There should be a German compound noun for the pleasing moment when a country fulfils a glib preconception
I’ve just experienced such a moment. I’m having breakfast at Medellin airport and for the third time on this trip I’ve paused while drinking a coffee and thought: Wow, that is great coffee
Three times cannot be coincidence. Colombia has great coffee
Cue: German compound noun describing this revelation
Eine Selbstverstaendlichkeit.
Hah! Danke!
I’m actually going to take this. Or maybe @Nigelb’s because it’s shorter
“A Frenchman has just done a rude shrug at me! What a perfect wissenbestatigung”
The thing about the Michelle Donelan £15k payment is that this will have cost the taxpayer much more than that. There will be a cost from a government legal team having to deal with this. We know Donelan had civil servants working on the non-issue. The UKRI had to conduct an entirely unnecessary investigation. Two publicly-funded academics had to waste their time dealing with the false accusation. That will all add up to way more than £15k.
I think the whole story is just bizarre. If she's skint, which I find hard to believe, couldn't Rishi lend or even give her the money? How could they not see it was PR poison?
That said, nobody mentioned it on the doorsteps this morning. Anecdata: 5 of us in Godalming for a couple of hours. Perceptible drift to Labour, but nothing huge, and pensioners generally staying loyal to the Tories - in fact, one said "I always voted Labour when I was working, but the Tories seem to look after us old folk better." She was curious about Reform, though, and said she might give them a try. Some LD->Lab swing, which as this is achetypal Blue Wall is striking. Some personal votes for Hunt, who is acknowledged as being visible in the constituency despite his other commitments.
Waverley doesn’t have any Council elections this year, and Labour in SW Surrey is in far distant third. I do hope the critic of LibDem campaigning in mid-Beds hasn’t been exposed as a hypocrite?
Mr. Divvie, given there's Ukraine, Russia, the civil war between two differentarmies in Sudan, Ethiopia teetering on the brink, Israel/Gaza, and so on, I'm going to be very controversial and suggest the notion the UK is the second most miserable place on Earth might just be silly.
I fear that insisting that we’re actually not as miserable as countries afflicted by civil war, famine and area bombing by a vengeful neighbour might not be a big winner on the reassurance front.
Well, there's certainly a shortage of unpatriotic sausages that aren't mostly made of rusks.
There should be a German compound noun for the pleasing moment when a country fulfils a glib preconception
I’ve just experienced such a moment. I’m having breakfast at Medellin airport and for the third time on this trip I’ve paused while drinking a coffee and thought: Wow, that is great coffee
Three times cannot be coincidence. Colombia has great coffee
Cue: German compound noun describing this revelation
Eine Selbstverstaendlichkeit.
Hah! Danke!
I’m actually going to take this. Or maybe @Nigelb’s because it’s shorter
“A Frenchman has just done a rude shrug at me! What a perfect wissenbestatigung”
Nick’s is cleverer. If you want to render it slightly ridiculous, then perhaps … Eine Selbstverstaendlichwissensbestätigung..?
Speaking of music, as we are, DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU
“‘It’s terrifying’: songwriter behind Robbie Williams hits out at AI in the music industry Guy Chambers says future albums may need disclaimers about how they were made amid rise of AI’s use for writing songs”
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
The pensioners that did win the war, now nearly all dead, were generally poorly treated in retirement - little private pension, meagre state pension. So the current situation is a result of trying to correct this injustice, the beneficiaries being those who were born in the 30's - 50's, who were too young to fight in the war.
I've said a few times that some pensioners are doing incredibly well when you have state pension + defined benefit pension + interest from savings + no mortgage The marginal tax rate on all that income up to 50k is 15%.
However this is not by any means the majority of pensioners- many of whom rely solely on the state pension.
Link state pension to earnings only. Boost pension credit by 10% and retain the triple lock on it. Merge NI and IT.
Very sensible, but with the fury from labour at the very idea of abolishing NI into one tax rate just confirms it will not happen in the forceable future
Fury from Tories like me too, NI should be ringfenced and funding the state pension, JSA and some healthcare. Without NI we lose the contributions based welfare element, including JSA which you have to have paid in enough NI as an employee for
Contributions have not been the basis of the welfare state for many years.
Nothing is ring fenced. Merging NI into IT is just admiting the truth.
Labour £28bn on the environment bad Tories £40bn on NIC good
This is related to the fact that a lot of "environment" spending in this instance means "spaffing cash up the wall for very marginal gains, mostly to the benefit of Chinese companies".
For all the hot air shouted about it, we've no real green industrial base (nor are we likely to get one). The dash for EVs in going to completly destroy the European car industry and replace it with a Chinese one.
By comparison, cutting NIC cuts a tax on jobs. As any economist will tell you, if you want less of something, you tax it more. Except we probably don't want less jobs... which makes the taxation of work a particularly stupid thing to do, and a good top priority thing to cut.
As a bonus, if we manage to get NI to zero and abolish it, we can indulge in a bit of tax simplication for once, which saves everyone money. (In Hunts shoes I would have abolished NI at this budget and raised income tax to compensate for the lost revenue).
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
The pensioners that did win the war, now nearly all dead, were generally poorly treated in retirement - little private pension, meagre state pension. So the current situation is a result of trying to correct this injustice, the beneficiaries being those who were born in the 30's - 50's, who were too young to fight in the war.
I've said a few times that some pensioners are doing incredibly well when you have state pension + defined benefit pension + interest from savings + no mortgage The marginal tax rate on all that income up to 50k is 15%.
However this is not by any means the majority of pensioners- many of whom rely solely on the state pension.
Link state pension to earnings only. Boost pension credit by 10% and retain the triple lock on it. Merge NI and IT.
Very sensible, but with the fury from labour at the very idea of abolishing NI into one tax rate just confirms it will not happen in the forceable future
Fury from Tories like me too, NI should be ringfenced and funding the state pension, JSA and some healthcare. Without NI we lose the contributions based welfare element, including JSA which you have to have paid in enough NI as an employee for
Contributions have not been the basis of the welfare state for many years.
Nothing is ring fenced. Merging NI into IT is just admiting the truth.
On Donelan, it will suit her and Sunak that most attention is focused on whether taxpayer money should be used to pay her libel costs and fees, as it distracts from her original sin.
That sin, of course, was putting in the public domain an unwarranted, unresearched and untrue allegation that two academics were Hamas sympathisers and should therefore be sacked from their roles. Regardless of the financial issue, she should have been sacked for that original sin. It really is disgraceful behaviour that makes her unsuitable for a ministerial post, and probably unsuited to being an MP. It's equivalent to Lee Anderson's allegation about Sadiq Khan, for which he was suspended from the Tory Party.
I think this comes down to the modern culture - the desire to be first with the news has undermined the importance of accuracy. You see it with journalists - and on here - so it’s not just ministers
Additionally the concept of sacking people for the smallest transgression is stupid. There needs to be a graduation of penalties otherwise you run out of people to fill the tumbrils very quickly
Labour £28bn on the environment bad Tories £40bn on NIC good
This is related to the fact that a lot of "environment" spending in this instance means "spaffing cash up the wall for very marginal gains, mostly to the benefit of Chinese companies".
For all the hot air shouted about it, we've no real green industrial base (nor are we likely to get one). The dash for EVs in going to completly destroy the European car industry and replace it with a Chinese one.
By comparison, cutting NIC cuts a tax on jobs. As any economist will tell you, if you want less of something, you tax it more. Except we probably don't want less jobs... which makes the taxation of work a particularly stupid thing to do, and a good top priority thing to cut.
As a bonus, if we manage to get NI to zero and abolish it, we can indulge in a bit of tax simplication for once, which saves everyone money. (In Hunts shoes I would have abolished NI at this budget and raised income tax to compensate for the lost revenue).
That would have lost him his core vote as pensioners faced an 8% rise in their basic tax rate. Really better to do this in stages over a small number of years, as I have previously suggested.
Speaking of music, as we are, DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU
“‘It’s terrifying’: songwriter behind Robbie Williams hits out at AI in the music industry Guy Chambers says future albums may need disclaimers about how they were made amid rise of AI’s use for writing songs”
AI is going to supplant humans in virtually all fields of creativity - writing to painting, composing to movie making
I was right. Sorry
But also I think there are lots of potential dangers and I’m worried that young musicians might get lazy, and in this business you’re not going to get anywhere if you’re lazy.
Sounds like he's mainly worried about over-reliance and people not putting in the necessary hard yards to do something decent.
For the first twenty or thirty minutes, all I could think was, 'Another bloody film about posh Oxford students, made by another bloody posh ex-Oxford student, set exactly when she was a bloody posh Oxford student.' And I was really ready to hate it. Then it changed into something else when the two main characters decamped to the posher one's home, which of course was a massive stately home (they used Drayton House in Northamptonshire for the filming). And I was really quite ready to like it.
However, it's a bit of a Frankentein's monster of a film. At times it wants to be Brideshead Revisited; at times it wants to be The Talented Mr Ripley; at times it wants to be Gormenghast; sometimes the director really fancies herself as Wes Anderson, with painterly scenes captured in vivid colours; sometime she fancies herself as a new Hitchcock with suspenseful reveals and opaque dialogue. But none of it is ever committed to wholeheartedly - it's all a little underpowered, and underinspired. This is obvious in the sketchy way the protagonist exercises his power over the others - never really fully flesh out - but the epitome of this is the now quite famous dance sequence at the end to Murder on the Dancefloor: the actor jiggles about (in more ways than one) adequately enough, but neither he, nor the camerawork, ever really commits fully to it. Hugh Grant in Love Actually and Tom Cruise in Risky Business are the obvious comparators, and both really give 100% - but this, not so much.
There are some standout scenes: Oliver and the draining bath; Oliver and Venetia in the garden at night; and Oliver and Venetia in the last bathroom scene - but other than that it's a bit colourless.
Carey Mulligan is lovely in a little cameo as the unwelcome cousin. Richard E Grant is great as the paterfamilias (although I did get flashbacks to Rowley Birkin QC) Rosamund Pike... when will directors realise that, attractive as she is, she. cannot. act. at. all. Not a flicker of acting ever crosses her face. Now, if Jennifer Saunders had played the part...
Saltburn sounds like one of those trendy films that booms on the hype but won't age well.
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
The pensioners that did win the war, now nearly all dead, were generally poorly treated in retirement - little private pension, meagre state pension. So the current situation is a result of trying to correct this injustice, the beneficiaries being those who were born in the 30's - 50's, who were too young to fight in the war.
I've said a few times that some pensioners are doing incredibly well when you have state pension + defined benefit pension + interest from savings + no mortgage The marginal tax rate on all that income up to 50k is 15%.
However this is not by any means the majority of pensioners- many of whom rely solely on the state pension.
Link state pension to earnings only. Boost pension credit by 10% and retain the triple lock on it. Merge NI and IT.
Very sensible, but with the fury from labour at the very idea of abolishing NI into one tax rate just confirms it will not happen in the forceable future
Fury from Tories like me too, NI should be ringfenced and funding the state pension, JSA and some healthcare. Without NI we lose the contributions based welfare element, including JSA which you have to have paid in enough NI as an employee for
Contributions have not been the basis of the welfare state for many years.
Nothing is ring fenced. Merging NI into IT is just admiting the truth.
And you either pay tax or get credits when unemployed…
And the £800-odd you can pay voluntarily for a extra year’s NI credits, if you haven’t earned any from employment, is a real bargain in terms of the financial return it will give you, provided you expect to live to state pension age in order to collect. So long as you don’t have Leon’s lifestyle, it should be a no-brainer.
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
The pensioners that did win the war, now nearly all dead, were generally poorly treated in retirement - little private pension, meagre state pension. So the current situation is a result of trying to correct this injustice, the beneficiaries being those who were born in the 30's - 50's, who were too young to fight in the war.
I've said a few times that some pensioners are doing incredibly well when you have state pension + defined benefit pension + interest from savings + no mortgage The marginal tax rate on all that income up to 50k is 15%.
However this is not by any means the majority of pensioners- many of whom rely solely on the state pension.
Link state pension to earnings only. Boost pension credit by 10% and retain the triple lock on it. Merge NI and IT.
Very sensible, but with the fury from labour at the very idea of abolishing NI into one tax rate just confirms it will not happen in the forceable future
Fury from Tories like me too, NI should be ringfenced and funding the state pension, JSA and some healthcare. Without NI we lose the contributions based welfare element, including JSA which you have to have paid in enough NI as an employee for
Contributions have not been the basis of the welfare state for many years.
Nothing is ring fenced. Merging NI into IT is just admiting the truth.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
My straw poll is that self-interested and self-entitled pensioners (sadly, I include my parents here) are entirely untouched by the budget this week - the cut on NI is not relevant to them. They seemed only briefly interested in the fact it was for us. It's possible their propensity to vote has dipped slightly in the polling, without many new votes coming from working people the other way, leading to the even lower Tory polling.
They truly seem to live in a bubble where they're hard done by and have no idea how the rest of the population see them.
There are of course many very nice and altruistic pensioners including all our parents and beloved aunts and uncles. But as a bloc they deploy an incredible doublethink about the past. It was:
- Hard graft, a struggle to make ends meet, meaning anyone now comfortable in retirement did so against the odds and through hard work - A paradise where people greeted each other in the streets, there was no crime, Britain was admired and feared abroad and the trains ran on time
There's also a remarkable proportion of the population who seem to think that people in their 70s "won the war". Probably because people in their 70s *when they were kids* were indeed the ones that did.
This all plays into a weird mythology we have about "old people" that is not really helpful to anyone.
The pensioners that did win the war, now nearly all dead, were generally poorly treated in retirement - little private pension, meagre state pension. So the current situation is a result of trying to correct this injustice, the beneficiaries being those who were born in the 30's - 50's, who were too young to fight in the war.
I've said a few times that some pensioners are doing incredibly well when you have state pension + defined benefit pension + interest from savings + no mortgage The marginal tax rate on all that income up to 50k is 15%.
However this is not by any means the majority of pensioners- many of whom rely solely on the state pension.
Link state pension to earnings only. Boost pension credit by 10% and retain the triple lock on it. Merge NI and IT.
Very sensible, but with the fury from labour at the very idea of abolishing NI into one tax rate just confirms it will not happen in the forceable future
Fury from Tories like me too, NI should be ringfenced and funding the state pension, JSA and some healthcare. Without NI we lose the contributions based welfare element, including JSA which you have to have paid in enough NI as an employee for
Contributions have not been the basis of the welfare state for many years.
Nothing is ring fenced. Merging NI into IT is just admiting the truth.
And you either pay tax or get credits when unemployed…
As I've said, the government can easily change the system but the link between NI and the pension, however anachronistic, will have to be broken before NI can be abolished.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
Next on the list of things we ought to be talking about but aren't. The extraordinary number of liberal identifying young women in the US who have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. The explanations could be various. One thing you can guarantee is that the experts won't be touching it.
Speaking of music, as we are, DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU
“‘It’s terrifying’: songwriter behind Robbie Williams hits out at AI in the music industry Guy Chambers says future albums may need disclaimers about how they were made amid rise of AI’s use for writing songs”
AI is going to supplant humans in virtually all fields of creativity - writing to painting, composing to movie making
I was right. Sorry
But also I think there are lots of potential dangers and I’m worried that young musicians might get lazy, and in this business you’re not going to get anywhere if you’re lazy.
Sounds like he's mainly worried about over-reliance and people not putting in the necessary hard yards to do something decent.
I actually know Guy Chambers (I met him when I went on tour for a few days with Robbie Williams - long story). Very decent bloke
I imagine he is biting his tongue a bit, there. He’s not going to say “music as we know it is finished. Don’t bother any more. It's basically over”
But he is extremely bright and I bet that is what he really thinks. Because it is true. Some human music will survive - live performances by a few beautiful stars, small scale artisanal music played for fun in homes and bars and weddings
But the mass produced music we hear on our phones and in clubs and all around us: 90%+ of music - it will be composed and performed entirely by AI. It will probably be better than human music - that is the truly scary thing
Labour £28bn on the environment bad Tories £40bn on NIC good
This is related to the fact that a lot of "environment" spending in this instance means "spaffing cash up the wall for very marginal gains, mostly to the benefit of Chinese companies".
For all the hot air shouted about it, we've no real green industrial base (nor are we likely to get one). The dash for EVs in going to completly destroy the European car industry and replace it with a Chinese one.
By comparison, cutting NIC cuts a tax on jobs. As any economist will tell you, if you want less of something, you tax it more. Except we probably don't want less jobs... which makes the taxation of work a particularly stupid thing to do, and a good top priority thing to cut.
As a bonus, if we manage to get NI to zero and abolish it, we can indulge in a bit of tax simplication for once, which saves everyone money. (In Hunts shoes I would have abolished NI at this budget and raised income tax to compensate for the lost revenue).
That would have lost him his core vote as pensioners faced an 8% rise in their basic tax rate. Really better to do this in stages over a small number of years, as I have previously suggested.
That is the point and the one Hunt made
It would take some years but for those who complain that pensioners are featherbed at the expensive of the young and workers they misunderstand the principle and its time has come and create fairness in tax
For the first twenty or thirty minutes, all I could think was, 'Another bloody film about posh Oxford students, made by another bloody posh ex-Oxford student, set exactly when she was a bloody posh Oxford student.' And I was really ready to hate it. Then it changed into something else when the two main characters decamped to the posher one's home, which of course was a massive stately home (they used Drayton House in Northamptonshire for the filming). And I was really quite ready to like it.
However, it's a bit of a Frankentein's monster of a film. At times it wants to be Brideshead Revisited; at times it wants to be The Talented Mr Ripley; at times it wants to be Gormenghast; sometimes the director really fancies herself as Wes Anderson, with painterly scenes captured in vivid colours; sometime she fancies herself as a new Hitchcock with suspenseful reveals and opaque dialogue. But none of it is ever committed to wholeheartedly - it's all a little underpowered, and underinspired. This is obvious in the sketchy way the protagonist exercises his power over the others - never really fully flesh out - but the epitome of this is the now quite famous dance sequence at the end to Murder on the Dancefloor: the actor jiggles about (in more ways than one) adequately enough, but neither he, nor the camerawork, ever really commits fully to it. Hugh Grant in Love Actually and Tom Cruise in Risky Business are the obvious comparators, and both really give 100% - but this, not so much.
There are some standout scenes: Oliver and the draining bath; Oliver and Venetia in the garden at night; and Oliver and Venetia in the last bathroom scene - but other than that it's a bit colourless.
Carey Mulligan is lovely in a little cameo as the unwelcome cousin. Richard E Grant is great as the paterfamilias (although I did get flashbacks to Rowley Birkin QC) Rosamund Pike... when will directors realise that, attractive as she is, she. cannot. act. at. all. Not a flicker of acting ever crosses her face. Now, if Jennifer Saunders had played the part...
Saltburn sounds like one of those trendy films that booms on the hype but won't age well.
It was sufficiently different to other current fare to get attention, but not sufficiently good at being different to sustain it. And to be clear, I think there about four potential films contained within it that I would have liked a lot, but none of them were developed enough.
Perhaps the best they can hope for is that they end up being led in opposition by someone who is merely unelectable rather than being actively dangerous - a Foot rather than a Benn.
Next on the list of things we ought to be talking about but aren't. The extraordinary number of liberal identifying young women in the US who have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. The explanations could be various. One thing you can guarantee is that the experts won't be touching it.
There was a post earlier today about the dangers of self reported polling data, using the holocaust as an example, especially amongst under 30s. This will be a big factor again here.
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/09/not-a-sausage-how-latest-post-brexit-checks-have-hit-uk-delis
Whether she ends up as an effective Kinnock type opposition leader bringing the party back from the wilderness, or an empty vessel out of her depth, remains to be seen. She’s shown signs of both tendencies and is still a bit of an enigma.
Was regarded as a risible joke by most when he was actually doing the stuff similar people now admire him for.
..not as good as her classic routines with her former dog Jump, but surely will give the UK a run for our money… a fast high-jumping end to the routine..surely first place is coming..
FWIW the self-appointed spokesmen of pensioners often do the whole group a disservice by coming across as exceptionally selfish. Moaning about a tax they're already exempted for getting reduced while describing an 8% increase in the state pension as nothing is just detestable.
My hunch is that Hunt hoped to get as much of an electoral boost form an NI cut as from an income tax cut, but more cheaply. Everything else is making a virtue of necessity- much like the non-dom raid.
The other was caused by a greater than usual number of people needing to use the ramp to board or depart the train. We were only 3 mins late at the penultimate stop, but that meant that our platform was occupied when we got to Euston so had to wait ages for another to become free, for a total delay of 14 minutes.
Both demonstrate well one of our major problems: we're running the system so close to full capacity that there's barely any margin for error - so the effects of any problems tend to multiply.
We've skimped on the infrastructure, and are now paying the price.
That sin, of course, was putting in the public domain an unwarranted, unresearched and untrue allegation that two academics were Hamas sympathisers and should therefore be sacked from their roles. Regardless of the financial issue, she should have been sacked for that original sin. It really is disgraceful behaviour that makes her unsuitable for a ministerial post, and probably unsuited to being an MP. It's equivalent to Lee Anderson's allegation about Sadiq Khan, for which he was suspended from the Tory Party.
I can image a decade long tussle between a Lib-Dem-expanding-rightwards (2010 with master and servant reversed) and a Con-Refuk party to be the non-Labour party, because our system only really allows for two big national parties.
One of those would be fairly congenial for me (and I suspect you), but the other would be blooming scary.
While this happens, Labour will keep.winning without breaking sweat. That might work OK if they use the time to do the messy but necessary retooling of the country.
Anyway Mordaunt was this week saying that Donelan was an honourable person because she did not take a redundancy payment for losing a previous Cabinet position where she had been in post for 36 hours.
Why Mordaunt is rated at all beats me. Another empty vessel with no achievement to her name.
"Thanks for shopping at Tesco."
JC is more renowned (and renowned he is) as a musician than a singer with the Velvets.
They were a popular beat combo, m'lud.
Even through the trains in Finland and objectively better and more enjoyable to travel on there is no comparable system of delay repay. Ultimately in the UK if you are disciplined about claiming refunds then you can claim back a significant proportion of your annual spend on train tickets.
"Nice briefcase."
I think, looking at the talent puddle, they could do worse. But first she has to hold her seat.
Nothing wrong with nerds. I’m one. But I don’t think the Great British Public want someone emanating such powerful nerd vibes leading the country.
His popularity with sections of the Tory Party is explained by the fact that it is full of childhood nerds who’ve made a few quid and delight in wrecking the lives of the ‘popular kids’ by getting into government and decimating public services and cratering the economy.
Revenge a dish best eaten cold and all that.
I hope folk appreciate my careful use of capitals.
Since up is down, let's be consistent.
Mordaunt's problem is a lack of political base. People say she's "woke", but she's really not - she'd have been thoroughly mainstream in May's cabinet, and nothing out of the ordinary even under Boris. She's long been a hard Brexiteer, but then the same can be said for all the other potential candidates apart from Truss.
What else is there to her? Being a naval reservist, perhaps - admirable, but by appearing to have over-egged her role in the past she can't really rely on any upside from that.
Otherwise, there's not much to her that I can see. Hoping to base a leadership campaign on not being an alt-right conspiracy theorist seems a bit thin. She could do with finding an actual policy or two to champion.
That said, nobody mentioned it on the doorsteps this morning. Anecdata: 5 of us in Godalming for a couple of hours. Perceptible drift to Labour, but nothing huge, and pensioners generally staying loyal to the Tories - in fact, one said "I always voted Labour when I was working, but the Tories seem to look after us old folk better." She was curious about Reform, though, and said she might give them a try. Some LD->Lab swing, which as this is achetypal Blue Wall is striking. Some personal votes for Hunt, who is acknowledged as being visible in the constituency despite his other commitments.
He's one of those late Gen X types who got away with dressing like a millennial for a while, but then didn't notice when the zeitgeist changed. You half expect him to turn up wearing skinny jeans and sporting an undercut...
Wound up the GOP a treat.
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1766199711881687353
If the Conservatives want to minimise their time in opposition, their best bet is probably a Kinnock- someone who can speak and keep the morale up, whilst working out why they lost and what the party is for now. But also making space for the next PM in waiting. If the Conservatives are lucky, they're on the candidates' list at the moment, but otherwise unknown.
I'm not holding my breath that the party will do this.
I’ve just experienced such a moment. I’m having breakfast at Medellin airport and for the third time on this trip I’ve paused while drinking a coffee and thought: Wow, that is great coffee
Three times cannot be coincidence. Colombia has great coffee
Cue: German compound noun describing this revelation
Previous versions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFcRMoItbUw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVv5P_eie4o
Nothing is ring fenced. Merging NI into IT is just admiting the truth.
Also his solo album Paris 1919 is an absolute masterpiece. Almost entirely forgotten now, but full of marvellous tunes. Here’s one
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=r1NmrknzeLg&si=4vI5FHQQhFBsEagJ
And he wrote lovely melodies when he was inclined
Excellent jobs numbers yet again on Friday too: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/08/jobs-report-february-2024-us-job-growth-totaled-275000.html
He really should be a shoo in for President but the US seem deep in the cavern of alternative facts and most of the media can still persuade themselves the opposite is true, see this for an example: https://thespectator.com/topic/joe-biden-war-truth-state-union-realclear-samizdat/
It will be interesting to see if the SOTU moves the polls.
I’m actually going to take this. Or maybe @Nigelb’s because it’s shorter
“A Frenchman has just done a rude shrug at me! What a perfect wissenbestatigung”
If you want to render it slightly ridiculous, then perhaps … Eine Selbstverstaendlichwissensbestätigung..?
“‘It’s terrifying’: songwriter behind Robbie Williams hits out at AI in the music industry
Guy Chambers says future albums may need disclaimers about how they were made amid rise of AI’s use for writing songs”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/mar/09/its-terrifying-songwriter-behind-robbie-williams-hits-out-at-ai-in-the-music-industry
AI is going to supplant humans in virtually all fields of creativity - writing to painting, composing to movie making
I was right. Sorry
Tories £40bn on NIC good
https://www.gov.uk/state-pension/how-much-you-get
For all the hot air shouted about it, we've no real green industrial base (nor are we likely to get one). The dash for EVs in going to completly destroy the European car industry and replace it with a Chinese one.
By comparison, cutting NIC cuts a tax on jobs. As any economist will tell you, if you want less of something, you tax it more. Except we probably don't want less jobs... which makes the taxation of work a particularly stupid thing to do, and a good top priority thing to cut.
As a bonus, if we manage to get NI to zero and abolish it, we can indulge in a bit of tax simplication for once, which saves everyone money. (In Hunts shoes I would have abolished NI at this budget and raised income tax to compensate for the lost revenue).
Additionally the concept of sacking people for the smallest transgression is stupid. There needs to be a graduation of penalties otherwise you run out of people to fill the tumbrils very quickly
Sounds like he's mainly worried about over-reliance and people not putting in the necessary hard yards to do something decent.
Or do you think Brexit is a great British success story worth billions?
Next on the list of things we ought to be talking about but aren't. The extraordinary number of liberal identifying young women in the US who have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. The explanations could be various. One thing you can guarantee is that the experts won't be touching it.
I imagine he is biting his tongue a bit, there. He’s not going to say “music as we know it is finished. Don’t bother any more. It's basically over”
But he is extremely bright and I bet that is what he really thinks. Because it is true. Some human music will survive - live performances by a few beautiful stars, small scale artisanal music played for fun in homes and bars and weddings
But the mass produced music we hear on our phones and in clubs and all around us: 90%+ of music - it will be composed and performed entirely by AI. It will probably be better than human music - that is the truly scary thing
It would take some years but for those who complain that pensioners are featherbed at the expensive of the young and workers they misunderstand the principle and its time has come and create fairness in tax
The nation weighed them and found them wanting.