Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
Domestic manufacturing damaged itself. Not continuing to subsidise corpses was simply non-insane.
U.K. manufacturing is alive and doing quite well. The meme that it doesn’t exist seems embedded in parts of the Left.
You can not deny a decline. Here's a pretty comprehensive explanation, and it is happy to shower the blame on everyone.
The decline happened because of a blank refusal, especially in heavy industry, to invest in the future and change methods. By the management, government and unions.
Going round some of the old industrial sites - they had machinery from before WWII. In places that closed in the 70s and 80s.
Let's take the motor industry. In the early 1970s British Leyland was the fourth largest automotive group behind General Motors, Ford, and I think Toyota.
British Leyland, Volkswagen and Renault were in trouble. Volkswagen were baled out by the West German Government and a growth plan was set in place including modernising model lines and manufacturing techniques. Renault was nationalised and did likewise. What remains of British Leyland is owned by the Germans, the Indians and the Chinese.
The motor industry is instructive - as BL staggered on, other car companies setup efficient, productive factories in the U.K.
The same people very often. In one factory they miserably produced expensive, not very good cars. In another they produced modern cars to high quality, at a good price.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We seem to be in a weird place. In the USA it seems most of the GOP truly believe government is good for nothing (except winning cultural battles), so don't care even about basic funding of it.
Here, we're in a halfway place where everything is seen as too expensive to invest in, but everyone including the Tories is still committed to doing all the basic stuff and discretionary stuff of government (other than DEI courses).
So certain things and day to day gets support but long term stuff is losing support.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
No list but in Ireland the advice is to "vote early and vote often" and that can't be doable with a requirement for ID
And on top of past Tory-era accumulations, plus (as others have said) mortgage interest rates so inescapably linked to the Truss administration, which was Tory ... Inflation, in the sense of total increase of the cost of living over the last few years, whatever the instantaneous rate, is what counts in voters' experience and mind. And to bleat about the instantaneous differential function is going to get Mr Sunak very little sympathy.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
I assume there must be some. I didn't see the need for the policy here myself however.
But what should have been a policy criticism was made a moral argument, and I think the everyperson on the street would not but that, even with Rees-Moggs admission of the (obvious) motives.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
I assume there must be some. I didn't see the need for the policy here myself however.
But what should have been a policy criticism was made a moral argument, and I think the everyperson on the street would not but that, even with Rees-Moggs admission of the (obvious) motives.
My flatmate had his vote stolen by personation. And was brushed off when he tried to report it.
Good. One of the reasons for all this is politicians giving the impression that there are quick easy solutions to our problems.
Labour are running around giving the impression that the quick easy solution to our problems is booting out the Tories. It may attune with the zeitgeist. But hardly honest. The truth is, Labour will have over a decade of pent up payback cheques their supporters are going to want cashed in Year One to change Britain. The only way that can happen is growth - and there is no evidence they can make a material difference over what growth the Tories have delivered - or else by raising taxes.
There is no honesty in Labour's offer to the voters.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
Domestic manufacturing damaged itself. Not continuing to subsidise corpses was simply non-insane.
U.K. manufacturing is alive and doing quite well. The meme that it doesn’t exist seems embedded in parts of the Left.
You can not deny a decline. Here's a pretty comprehensive explanation, and it is happy to shower the blame on everyone.
The decline happened because of a blank refusal, especially in heavy industry, to invest in the future and change methods. By the management, government and unions.
Going round some of the old industrial sites - they had machinery from before WWII. In places that closed in the 70s and 80s.
Let's take the motor industry. In the early 1970s British Leyland was the fourth largest automotive group behind General Motors, Ford, and I think Toyota.
British Leyland, Volkswagen and Renault were in trouble. Volkswagen were baled out by the West German Government and a growth plan was set in place including modernising model lines and manufacturing techniques. Renault was nationalised and did likewise. What remains of British Leyland is owned by the Germans, the Indians and the Chinese.
The motor industry is instructive - as BL staggered on, other car companies setup efficient, productive factories in the U.K.
The same people very often. In one factory they miserably produced expensive, not very good cars. In another they produced modern cars to high quality, at a good price.
I don't buy your argument.
British Leyland were seen as analogous to all that was wrong with industrial relations. Scraps were thrown to keep it going, Jaguar was spun off and later sold. The skeleton was handed in Austin-Rover form to BAe, who subsequently sold it to an overseas buyer. Ironically to one who started in the car business by building Austin Sevens under licence.
But then the Government couldn't throw enough cash at Nissan, Toyota and Honda and in the case of the first two keep doing so. Remind me what happened to Honda in Swindon?
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Your argument completely ignores the third point of the spend - borrow - tax triangle. We all seem to agree that the country has not been paying its way for many years, well now is the time to start.
I know no one likes the idea of higher taxes but that is the only answer to this problem. "But taxes are at a post-war high' I hear you say. And so are the demands: health, social care, pensions - due to our changing demographic.
Taxing the wealthy is the only way to resolve this crisis.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
You two are giving me a nostalgic glow for the halcyon days when the exchange you just had was basically the whole scope of political argument in this country.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
No list but in Ireland the advice is to "vote early and vote often" and that can't be doable with a requirement for ID
When they tightened up voting in Northern Ireland, several hundred thousand voters suffered an existence deficit.
On the of the shouty parties got outraged. The chap in charge of the process held a press conference, and gave out the number for his office - said that anyone could call to complain about not having a vote. After some studying of navels, and whistling casually.... crickets...
I note the risers in inflation are petrol (Which the Gov't/BoE can do sweet FA about) and rent, which is obviously tied to house prices & mortgage rates.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
And yet this government does not insist that a company registering for VAT at an address in the UK has to first prove they actually do business at that address. Which is an open invitation to VAT fraud.
3.4% is excellent news and entirely as claimed, Rishi's own work with no external assistance.
"We have a plan and the plan is working, don't let Labour squander our golden legacy and take us back to square one".
Looks back to 2010 - hang on I felt better off then and local government services were way better than they are now.
Back to square one isn’t a threat, it’s an improvement
Oh and inflation at 3.4% isn’t brilliant, it will be interesting to see the impact in April / May / June as minimum wage increases by 10%
3.4% is fine, given where we came from and what expectation was, and we will be sub 2% soon.
3.4% is indeed 'ok' compared with what we have seen recently and yes it should be around 2% for April as there will be a big fall in the year on year domestic energy.
HOWEVER there will be a bounce back due to the continuing high level of wage rises particularly minimum wage. This probably won't come through until late 2024. MPC knows this is coming so are unlikely to cut interest rates by any extent this year. Lenders also know this is happening which is why mortgage rates are moving up albeit by a small amount.
So wages increasing more than inflation and savings rates higher than inflation.
There must be a Labour mole deep inside Jeremy Hunt's brain if he thinks this will not add to the Broken Britain narrative. In addition, now, let's think, is it natural Labour or Conservative supporters who are more likely to try and phone HMRC with self-assessed tax problems?
That's one of the worst ideas I've seen.
HMRC regularly screw up or alter tax codes (sometimes by their auto bots) and I need to phone them 2-3 times a year to sort it out.
Only humans can understand an individual's own circumstances.
Not to mention that some people cannot use HMRC's website because (and this brings us back to the thread header) even if online, they do not have the right ID needed to open a digital tax account.
I mentioned the procedure change yesterday, but everyone was too busy with princesses and Great Danes such as Rinka. I also pointed out a lot of people, including many OAPs, have to deal with tax returns for the first time in ages this yeat (fiscal drag, interest rate increase, and reduction of the savings interest allowance). I'd also remind us that there are now absolute fines for non-submission of £1K or so - irrespective of the size of tax actually owed (unlike in the old days when one was never fined more than one owed, so it was a doubling at most).
Oh yes, and there is one month between the reopening of the phones and the absolute deadline fdor paper returns.
Genius.
Anyone who thinks the Tories are good administrators must be bonkers. We see this sort of rubbish right across the services that they have been running for a decade.
It's because they spend all their time on being beastly to foreigners and Culture War, rather than on the day job.
I note the risers in inflation are petrol (Which the Gov't/BoE can do sweet FA about) and rent, which is obviously tied to house prices & mortgage rates.
Labour should reintroduce rent controls. Would save a lot in benefits going forward. Also has the benefit of constraining the housing price bubble.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Good. One of the reasons for all this is politicians giving the impression that there are quick easy solutions to our problems.
Labour are running around giving the impression that the quick easy solution to our problems is booting out the Tories. It may attune with the zeitgeist. But hardly honest. The truth is, Labour will have over a decade of pent up payback cheques their supporters are going to want cashed in Year One to change Britain. The only way that can happen is growth - and there is no evidence they can make a material difference over what growth the Tories have delivered - or else by raising taxes.
There is no honesty in Labour's offer to the voters.
Is that true, or right wing hopecasting? What I'm seeing is lots of moaning at the lack of promises Starmer and Reeves are making on spending. And once the election is over, those complaints are going to be more important, not less.
I'd much rather that someone, anyone, was honest about the need to rebalance taxes up and spending down. But it's not as if the government are any better.
I do hope that Reeves is rehearsing her "shocked at the state of the books" face and speech.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
If we take your argument back to Mrs Thatcher's notion of balancing the household budget, we have mortgage and HP repayment to the value of annual salaries, so to square that circle we are going to cut out the weekly food shop and cancel all the utilities.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
Not easy at all; we've had chronic underinvestment in business for decades.
Government spending on "the green crap" is not a bad idea to move the dial a bit. Renewables are cheap energy - and would substitute energy imports. Renewable assets need to be UK owned to make much of a difference, though.
A massive contributor to our economic problems is that so many of our assets are foreign-owned so profits and IP are sent abroad, worsening our balance of payments and reducing our tax base.
Foreigners were able to buy UK assets and in return we were able to have extra foreign holidays.
'Of the dozen years Broderick Hollins spent in (mostly) Illinois prisons and jails, he will never forget the tap water. Brown water at Stateville correctional center tasted like onions. It also sometimes came with clumps of rat hairs, flowing into residents’ cells via lead pipes.
“That’s where I got sick” with extreme lead poisoning, Hollins said of his six years at Stateville. It gave him migraines powerful enough to cause nosebleeds, deep-red eyes, and blurry vision; when he was released in 2020, he required painful chelation therapy injections to flush the lead from his body.'
Greggs says it is "experiencing issues accepting payments" amid reports shops have been forced to shut across the country.
In a statement, the bakery chain added: "We are working to resolve this as soon as possible."
Users on X around the country reported that their local branches were shut or heavily affected.
"Greggs in Westminster closed. Problem with tills," one person wrote, while another added: "Greggs this morning cash only ! Sitting here with my coffee watching almost everyone have to walk out."
It comes after "technical issues" affected Sainsbury's in store contactless payments and online delivery services at the weekend, causing chaos for shoppers.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
I note the risers in inflation are petrol (Which the Gov't/BoE can do sweet FA about) and rent, which is obviously tied to house prices & mortgage rates.
Other than not borrowing excessively, printing money and controlling public sector pay and tax there isn't much the government can do.
There must be a Labour mole deep inside Jeremy Hunt's brain if he thinks this will not add to the Broken Britain narrative. In addition, now, let's think, is it natural Labour or Conservative supporters who are more likely to try and phone HMRC with self-assessed tax problems?
That's one of the worst ideas I've seen.
HMRC regularly screw up or alter tax codes (sometimes by their auto bots) and I need to phone them 2-3 times a year to sort it out.
Only humans can understand an individual's own circumstances.
Not to mention that some people cannot use HMRC's website because (and this brings us back to the thread header) even if online, they do not have the right ID needed to open a digital tax account.
I mentioned the procedure change yesterday, but everyone was too busy with princesses and Great Danes such as Rinka. I also pointed out a lot of people, including many OAPs, have to deal with tax returns for the first time in ages this yeat (fiscal drag, interest rate increase, and reduction of the savings interest allowance). I'd also remind us that there are now absolute fines for non-submission of £1K or so - irrespective of the size of tax actually owed (unlike in the old days when one was never fined more than one owed, so it was a doubling at most).
Oh yes, and there is one month between the reopening of the phones and the absolute deadline fdor paper returns.
Genius.
If anyone you know on low income does get caught with one of these 'non-submission' fines there's a great organisation TaxAid (https://taxaid.org.uk) who can help. When I spoke to them recently about a client I was advising they gave me the following advice:
No appeal against the fines can be lodged until the self-assessment is submitted. Once the self-assessment is submitted, use form SA370 to lodge an appeal against the fine, which could well be regarded as 'unconscionable' in situations where the client does not earn enough to pay very much tax.
As a headline rate it's meh. Most wage rises should beat that this year.
It's well below the reality of how train, food and council tax prices are still increasing.
That's where the trouble is.
Aren't train prices regulated to match inflation ?
Yes, but there will be an inherent timelag. Which is presumably why CR thinks it's bad. Same with wages going up (if people are lucky). But that doesn't compensate for people having had a bad time meanwhile with the previous 12 months.
Greggs says it is "experiencing issues accepting payments" amid reports shops have been forced to shut across the country.
In a statement, the bakery chain added: "We are working to resolve this as soon as possible."
Users on X around the country reported that their local branches were shut or heavily affected.
"Greggs in Westminster closed. Problem with tills," one person wrote, while another added: "Greggs this morning cash only ! Sitting here with my coffee watching almost everyone have to walk out."
It comes after "technical issues" affected Sainsbury's in store contactless payments and online delivery services at the weekend, causing chaos for shoppers.
Greggs says it is "experiencing issues accepting payments" amid reports shops have been forced to shut across the country.
In a statement, the bakery chain added: "We are working to resolve this as soon as possible."
Users on X around the country reported that their local branches were shut or heavily affected.
"Greggs in Westminster closed. Problem with tills," one person wrote, while another added: "Greggs this morning cash only ! Sitting here with my coffee watching almost everyone have to walk out."
It comes after "technical issues" affected Sainsbury's in store contactless payments and online delivery services at the weekend, causing chaos for shoppers.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Higher taxes Big_G - it's the only answer but for any politician to admit as much is political suicide. Sadly.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
I wasn't very convinced by that article personally. A debunking by somebody on twitter is in this thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770175108939681937.html (in particular the graph referenced there about changes to planning policy in Croydon and effects on house prrices is new to me).
The study linked to by the Guardian article is less tendentious and more interesting but also ultimately unconvincing to me. I remain of the opinion that we need to build more and make it easier to build more.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
Not easy at all; we've had chronic underinvestment in business for decades.
Government spending on "the green crap" is not a bad idea to move the dial a bit. Renewables are cheap energy - and would substitute energy imports. Renewable assets need to be UK owned to make much of a difference, though.
A massive contributor to our economic problems is that so many of our assets are foreign-owned so profits and IP are sent abroad, worsening our balance of payments and reducing our tax base.
Foreigners were able to buy UK assets and in return we were able to have extra foreign holidays.
Greggs says it is "experiencing issues accepting payments" amid reports shops have been forced to shut across the country.
In a statement, the bakery chain added: "We are working to resolve this as soon as possible."
Users on X around the country reported that their local branches were shut or heavily affected.
"Greggs in Westminster closed. Problem with tills," one person wrote, while another added: "Greggs this morning cash only ! Sitting here with my coffee watching almost everyone have to walk out."
It comes after "technical issues" affected Sainsbury's in store contactless payments and online delivery services at the weekend, causing chaos for shoppers.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Higher taxes Big_G - it's the only answer but for any politician to admit as much is political suicide. Sadly.
The only problem for Labour is they have made the case taxes are far too high
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Countries presumably!
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
Directly subsidising U.K. manufacturing might be another direction…
Clever would be to do it on outputs.
Say that the government will pay x for each ton of raw steel produced. Make it green steel - zero carbon. Subsidy level based on U.K. content.
Clever because it would take years to setup the plant and start producing. Years until the subsidy would actually come into play…
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Flaw in the argument how many additional people have arrived since 2019? And has the number of houses kept up with that number.
House prices and rents are set on the margins. It really doesn't take much for rents to rapidly increase. 2-3 desperate tenants able to pay more and the new market rate is suddenly £50-100 more than it previously was...
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
Truss/ Kwarteng is the salutary lesson here. Assuming she becomes Chancellor, which is far from a done deal, Labour cannot frighten the horses, or at least the bond markets.
Once in Downing Street the cake can (if necessary) remain the same size, but the portions can be distributed differently.
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
Truss/ Kwarteng is the salutary lesson here. Assuming she becomes Chancellor, which is far from a done deal, Labour cannot frighten the horses, or at least the bond markets.
Once in Downing Street the cake can (if necessary) remain the same size, but the portions can be distributed differently.
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
Ed Davey advocated joining the Single Market in his speech on Sunday, so a clear differentiation from current Labour policy there.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Flaw in the argument how many additional people have arrived since 2019? And has the number of houses kept up with that number.
House prices and rents are set on the margins. It really doesn't take much for rents to rapidly increase. 2-3 desperate tenants able to pay more and the new market rate is suddenly £50-100 more than it previously was...
Also arguing based on homes per capita in the UK is assuming that an empty house in Dumfries can satisfy demand for homes in London...
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
Truss/ Kwarteng is the salutary lesson here. Assuming she becomes Chancellor, which is far from a done deal, Labour cannot frighten the horses, or at least the bond markets.
Once in Downing Street the cake can (if necessary) remain the same size, but the portions can be distributed differently.
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
The one thing the current Labour party is not going to do is give the tory party anything that the Tories can use to attack Labour with. Which is why it's a white canvas with economic policies following the current tory ones (for better and for worse).
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Flaw in the argument how many additional people have arrived since 2019? And has the number of houses kept up with that number.
House prices and rents are set on the margins. It really doesn't take much for rents to rapidly increase. 2-3 desperate tenants able to pay more and the new market rate is suddenly £50-100 more than it previously was...
House building is at about 235k net new properties per year since 2019, and net population increase is about 300k people per year so that seems roughly in balance (assuming ~1.5 people per property).
(ETA: and therefore short of the numbers required to impact property prices.)
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Countries presumably!
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
For the 12,556,445th time
Opposing the U.K. ID card was rational. This is because the problem with every proposal and the attempted implementation was the insane database nonsense that came with it.
The attempt to link everything to everything else, with terrible security would have made the NHS big IT projects look good. And provided one stop shopping for data thieves. And been utterly incompatible with GDPR….
I would suggest that an ID project could work. The high level requirements -
1) photo id card, credit card format 2) id code unique per person, with checksums etc 3) privacy secured method of verifying id - free to anyone. So anyone can verify an id shown to them. 4) anyone suggesting any Minority Report shit, get nail gunned. To the ceiling. With rusty nails.
@MarqueeMark it wouldn't surprise me if Totnes became a three-way marginal
Strictly speaking there isn’t going to be a Totnes constituency any more. It is being subsumed by South Devon. But Electoral Calculus agrees with you: 37% Cons, 32% Lab, 31% LibDem.
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
Clearly a seat that needs a steer on tactical voting.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
This would change the dial, but because there would be a Tory government instead of a Labour one. Logic does not come into it. A Labour plan for FoM/SM etc would unite the Tory and Reform parties around a single populist agenda, and a wealth tax would lose several % points on the Labour vote as the Labour voting Guardian readers etc quietly switch.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
Nah.
As things improve under Labour people will look back with utter horror at the latter day Conservative Gov’t and lumped in with that will be the Brexit vote, which looks increasingly disastrous.
With every passing year more of the old Alf Garnetts die off.
It’s a no-brainer that we will rejoin in some form or other and this time the economic merits will be made loud and clear by a Government that believes in them.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
The issue isn’t so much the ID requirement . It’s that we don’t have universal ID cards which all people have to carry . In that instance it’s a level playing field.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Flaw in the argument how many additional people have arrived since 2019? And has the number of houses kept up with that number.
House prices and rents are set on the margins. It really doesn't take much for rents to rapidly increase. 2-3 desperate tenants able to pay more and the new market rate is suddenly £50-100 more than it previously was...
House building is at about 235k net new properties per year since 2019, and net population increase is about 300k people per year so that seems roughly in balance (assuming ~1.5 people per property).
(ETA: and therefore short of the numbers required to impact property prices.)
Sorry but
The population of England and Wales at mid-year 2022 was estimated to be 60.2 million, an increase of around 578,000 (1.0%) since mid-year 2021.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Countries presumably!
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
Is it irrational?
When I see how corrupt power has been wielded so abusively in recent years and the disgusting infringements of civil liberties I would have no intention of ever having an ID card. I have also refused to update the DVLC with my current address and they can f-off with their Big Brother threats. I don’t drive so meh.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
Directly subsidising U.K. manufacturing might be another direction…
Clever would be to do it on outputs.
Say that the government will pay x for each ton of raw steel produced. Make it green steel - zero carbon. Subsidy level based on U.K. content.
Clever because it would take years to setup the plant and start producing. Years until the subsidy would actually come into play…
See car batteries for another example of this.
So how does that benefit anyone? To incentivise green steel and car batteries the Government has to divvie the cash up front otherwise no green steel and no battery plants.
Remember Jim Radcliffe. "I'm going to start a car company, a British car company called Ineos and I will name my car the Grenadier, you can't get more British than that. I will build my car on the old Ford engine plant in Bridgend. British jobs for British people! Wait, you have M. Macron on the line, how much? What about British jobs for French people?"
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Borrowing to increase economic output increases the amount of tax revenues we receive.
It is called investment. Business is often highly leveraged with debt, but does so because it will grow its revenues.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Flaw in the argument how many additional people have arrived since 2019? And has the number of houses kept up with that number.
House prices and rents are set on the margins. It really doesn't take much for rents to rapidly increase. 2-3 desperate tenants able to pay more and the new market rate is suddenly £50-100 more than it previously was...
House building is at about 235k net new properties per year since 2019, and net population increase is about 300k people per year so that seems roughly in balance (assuming ~1.5 people per property).
(ETA: and therefore short of the numbers required to impact property prices.)
That article manages to say a lot about "Landlordism" without saying how it creates a shortage of properties.
Hilariously, the author also claims that building more properties to reduce prices cant't work, since this would run counter to the interest of the house builders. It appears that he has never encountered a market with falling prices. That house builders will *try* to stop house prices falling is obvious - to everyone since Adam Smith. The point is to modify the rules of the housing market to make such a strategy fail. The Victorians and Edwardians managed this. By no creating local monopolies on the construction of the properties.
It also manages not to talk about the reason that, in Poland (say), property prices are not zooming to the skies. That is, when someone wants to build property in Poland, the system is wired in the yes direction. Very hard to ramp prices, if someone is building more houses or flats, locally, in response to demand.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Flaw in the argument how many additional people have arrived since 2019? And has the number of houses kept up with that number.
House prices and rents are set on the margins. It really doesn't take much for rents to rapidly increase. 2-3 desperate tenants able to pay more and the new market rate is suddenly £50-100 more than it previously was...
House building is at about 235k net new properties per year since 2019, and net population increase is about 300k people per year so that seems roughly in balance (assuming ~1.5 people per property).
(ETA: and therefore short of the numbers required to impact property prices.)
"short of the numbers required to impact property prices"
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
I wasn't very convinced by that article personally. A debunking by somebody on twitter is in this thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770175108939681937.html (in particular the graph referenced there about changes to planning policy in Croydon and effects on house prrices is new to me).
The study linked to by the Guardian article is less tendentious and more interesting but also ultimately unconvincing to me. I remain of the opinion that we need to build more and make it easier to build more.
That's very interesting, and I sympathise with the critic. The original article cites Vienna as a good example, and I agree that Vienna, whose housing policies I know quite well, is very pro-tenant: among other things, landlords need to get official permission to raise rents more than inflation. But the really striking thing about Vienna is the vastly greater supply of rental accommodation in high/medium-rise blocks (cf. the response's Croydon graph). Our focus on individual houses and gardens is IMO the core issue.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Flaw in the argument how many additional people have arrived since 2019? And has the number of houses kept up with that number.
House prices and rents are set on the margins. It really doesn't take much for rents to rapidly increase. 2-3 desperate tenants able to pay more and the new market rate is suddenly £50-100 more than it previously was...
House building is at about 235k net new properties per year since 2019, and net population increase is about 300k people per year so that seems roughly in balance (assuming ~1.5 people per property).
(ETA: and therefore short of the numbers required to impact property prices.)
"short of the numbers required to impact property prices"
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Countries presumably!
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
This is the key issue.
If you have mandatory ID cards (or de facto mandatory ID cards, as with driving licenses in the US), then every citizen has to do the same amount of "work" to vote. They all need to bring along their government issued, compulsory, ID card.
If, on the other hand, you do not, then there is substantial more work required for those people who don't drive.
There are many solutions to this: one could require everyone to bring along their voting card that was sent to their home. (Equal burdens on all.) One could have provisional ballots that are only verified and counted in the event a result is close. One could have returning officers that take polaroids of voters without ID and get voters to sign on the back that they are the person they say they are (with some random checks after the event).
Or one could recognise that instances of personation are extremely rare and the solution will disenfranchise many more people (probably many order of magnitude more) than the problem it is meant to solve.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
I wasn't very convinced by that article personally. A debunking by somebody on twitter is in this thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770175108939681937.html (in particular the graph referenced there about changes to planning policy in Croydon and effects on house prrices is new to me).
The study linked to by the Guardian article is less tendentious and more interesting but also ultimately unconvincing to me. I remain of the opinion that we need to build more and make it easier to build more.
That's very interesting, and I sympathise with the critic. The original article cites Vienna as a good example, and I agree that Vienna, whose housing policies I know quite well, is very pro-tenant: among other things, landlords need to get official permission to raise rents more than inflation. But the really striking thing about Vienna is the vastly greater supply of rental accommodation in high/medium-rise blocks (cf. the response's Croydon graph). Our focus on individual houses and gardens is IMO the core issue.
London is building blocks of flats everywhere. Even sandwiched between railway lines and roads....
The strange belief that we don’t build flats…
The reason that Vienna works is that the supply of housing is large enough, compared to the population, that the market is clearing.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
Nah.
As things improve under Labour people will look back with utter horror at the latter day Conservative Gov’t and lumped in with that will be the Brexit vote, which looks increasingly disastrous.
With every passing year more of the old Alf Garnetts die off.
It’s a no-brainer that we will rejoin in some form or other and this time the economic merits will be made loud and clear by a Government that believes in them.
Yes but you don't introduce unnecessary risk - and proposing an imminent return to SM/FOM would be a humdinger of a risk for Labour - when you're 20 points ahead with an election just around the corner.
I wonder if a future government will row back voter ID? Probably not an issue anyone will have much enthusiasm for.
Enfranchisement is (obviously, you’d think) a fundamental feature of democracy. Incidentally, it must be a decade or so since Cameron came out with his ‘physically sick’ remarks around prisoners voting. Another area where tbh I accept I am I probably pretty firmly in the minority, but I don’t agree with taking the vote away from convicts.
It’s an interesting philosophical question
If you take the view that government is a construct of the people to deliver community services then the ultimate punishment that the government can impose is to exclude people from the benefits of society either by exile or by imprisonment.
If someone is excluded from society why should they have a say in the formation of the government?
Now clearly this means that anyone with a prison term of less than 5 years should keep their vote without question. But anyone who is expected to be in prison for the entire term of the next parliament? I’m not so sure.
On the other hand, I'd argue that Labour shouldn't abolish voter ID, but instruct the boundary commission to base seats on census data, not on registered voters. That's a technical change that would make a huge difference, because city constituencies are underrated because of so many people moving around, especially the young. It just isn't a priority for most people to register instntly when they move, but at any given moment that means lots of people are underrepresented.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Ummm: that's pre-tax
As interest income is taxable, then for the vast majority of savers, then they will still be seeing real terms erosion of their savings.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
Truss/ Kwarteng is the salutary lesson here. Assuming she becomes Chancellor, which is far from a done deal, Labour cannot frighten the horses, or at least the bond markets.
Once in Downing Street the cake can (if necessary) remain the same size, but the portions can be distributed differently.
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
Ed Davey advocated joining the Single Market in his speech on Sunday, so a clear differentiation from current Labour policy there.
But Ed Davey can say that because he has as much hope of forming the next government as I do.
I wonder if a future government will row back voter ID? Probably not an issue anyone will have much enthusiasm for.
Enfranchisement is (obviously, you’d think) a fundamental feature of democracy. Incidentally, it must be a decade or so since Cameron came out with his ‘physically sick’ remarks around prisoners voting. Another area where tbh I accept I am I probably pretty firmly in the minority, but I don’t agree with taking the vote away from convicts.
It’s an interesting philosophical question
If you take the view that government is a construct of the people to deliver community services then the ultimate punishment that the government can impose is to exclude people from the benefits of society either by exile or by imprisonment.
If someone is excluded from society why should they have a say in the formation of the government?
Now clearly this means that anyone with a prison term of less than 5 years should keep their vote without question. But anyone who is expected to be in prison for the entire term of the next parliament? I’m not so sure.
On the other hand, I'd argue that Labour shouldn't abolish voter ID, but instruct the boundary commission to base seats on census data, not on registered voters. That's a technical change that would make a huge difference, because city constituencies are underrated because of so many people moving around, especially the young. It just isn't a priority for most people to register instntly when they move, but at any given moment that means lots of people are underrepresented.
Ummm.
But surely that means that people who have just left a constituency are still counted? So net, net the effect is probably close to zero.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
I wasn't very convinced by that article personally. A debunking by somebody on twitter is in this thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770175108939681937.html (in particular the graph referenced there about changes to planning policy in Croydon and effects on house prrices is new to me).
The study linked to by the Guardian article is less tendentious and more interesting but also ultimately unconvincing to me. I remain of the opinion that we need to build more and make it easier to build more.
That's very interesting, and I sympathise with the critic. The original article cites Vienna as a good example, and I agree that Vienna, whose housing policies I know quite well, is very pro-tenant: among other things, landlords need to get official permission to raise rents more than inflation. But the really striking thing about Vienna is the vastly greater supply of rental accommodation in high/medium-rise blocks (cf. the response's Croydon graph). Our focus on individual houses and gardens is IMO the core issue.
London is building blocks of flats everywhere. Even sandwiched between railway lines and roads....
The strange belief that we don’t build flats…
The reason that Vienna works is that the supply of housing is large enough, compared to the population, that the market is clearing.
The market clears in the UK/London. It just clears a price that most people aren't happy with.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
In Germany nobody is asked for ID if you bring the polling card with you. The polling card is automatically posted to everyone eligible to vote.
Other relevant differences: - everyone who is eligible to vote already has ID - there is no registering to vote. You have to register where you live to be legally resident in Germany and you automatically get sent the appropriate polling cards.
So the British ID requirement is both stricter (you have to show ID in the UK) and more exclusive (not everyone in the UK has photo ID). Plus no automatic voter registration.
There are countries which don't require ID (Australia I think is one) or have systems like allowing someone with ID to vouch for you in the polling station.
Are there any European countries which have such a strict (in person) voter ID rule as the UK as well as no national ID card?
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Countries presumably!
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
For the 12,556,445th time
Opposing the U.K. ID card was rational. This is because the problem with every proposal and the attempted implementation was the insane database nonsense that came with it.
The attempt to link everything to everything else, with terrible security would have made the NHS big IT projects look good. And provided one stop shopping for data thieves. And been utterly incompatible with GDPR….
I would suggest that an ID project could work. The high level requirements -
1) photo id card, credit card format 2) id code unique per person, with checksums etc 3) privacy secured method of verifying id - free to anyone. So anyone can verify an id shown to them. 4) anyone suggesting any Minority Report shit, get nail gunned. To the ceiling. With rusty nails.
Nearly every country with a requirement for voter ID has national ID cards. Are we uniquely incompetent that we cannot manage a system that nearly all other European countries do?
Often countries with stronger democracies than ours too.
I wonder if a future government will row back voter ID? Probably not an issue anyone will have much enthusiasm for.
Enfranchisement is (obviously, you’d think) a fundamental feature of democracy. Incidentally, it must be a decade or so since Cameron came out with his ‘physically sick’ remarks around prisoners voting. Another area where tbh I accept I am I probably pretty firmly in the minority, but I don’t agree with taking the vote away from convicts.
It’s an interesting philosophical question
If you take the view that government is a construct of the people to deliver community services then the ultimate punishment that the government can impose is to exclude people from the benefits of society either by exile or by imprisonment.
If someone is excluded from society why should they have a say in the formation of the government?
Now clearly this means that anyone with a prison term of less than 5 years should keep their vote without question. But anyone who is expected to be in prison for the entire term of the next parliament? I’m not so sure.
On the other hand, I'd argue that Labour shouldn't abolish voter ID, but instruct the boundary commission to base seats on census data, not on registered voters. That's a technical change that would make a huge difference, because city constituencies are underrated because of so many people moving around, especially the young. It just isn't a priority for most people to register instntly when they move, but at any given moment that means lots of people are underrepresented.
Ummm.
But surely that means that people who have just left a constituency are still counted? So net, net the effect is probably close to zero.
Also that the census is counting occupants rather than citizens with the right to vote. Which is currently a subject of much discussion in the US at the moment, with regard to a rather large number of undocumented arrivals. They currently set Congressional seat numbers per state based on population rather than voter rolls
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Ummm: that's pre-tax
As interest income is taxable, then for the vast majority of savers, then they will still be seeing real terms erosion of their savings.
The personal savings allowance and ISAs mean that for the clear majority of savers they are getting their interest mostly if not all tax free.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
I wasn't very convinced by that article personally. A debunking by somebody on twitter is in this thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770175108939681937.html (in particular the graph referenced there about changes to planning policy in Croydon and effects on house prrices is new to me).
The study linked to by the Guardian article is less tendentious and more interesting but also ultimately unconvincing to me. I remain of the opinion that we need to build more and make it easier to build more.
That's very interesting, and I sympathise with the critic. The original article cites Vienna as a good example, and I agree that Vienna, whose housing policies I know quite well, is very pro-tenant: among other things, landlords need to get official permission to raise rents more than inflation. But the really striking thing about Vienna is the vastly greater supply of rental accommodation in high/medium-rise blocks (cf. the response's Croydon graph). Our focus on individual houses and gardens is IMO the core issue.
London is building blocks of flats everywhere. Even sandwiched between railway lines and roads....
The strange belief that we don’t build flats…
The reason that Vienna works is that the supply of housing is large enough, compared to the population, that the market is clearing.
The market clears in the UK/London. It just clears a price that most people aren't happy with.
Reposting this (I think it was @Benpointer from yesterday?)
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
I wasn't very convinced by that article personally. A debunking by somebody on twitter is in this thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770175108939681937.html (in particular the graph referenced there about changes to planning policy in Croydon and effects on house prrices is new to me).
The study linked to by the Guardian article is less tendentious and more interesting but also ultimately unconvincing to me. I remain of the opinion that we need to build more and make it easier to build more.
That's very interesting, and I sympathise with the critic. The original article cites Vienna as a good example, and I agree that Vienna, whose housing policies I know quite well, is very pro-tenant: among other things, landlords need to get official permission to raise rents more than inflation. But the really striking thing about Vienna is the vastly greater supply of rental accommodation in high/medium-rise blocks (cf. the response's Croydon graph). Our focus on individual houses and gardens is IMO the core issue.
London is building blocks of flats everywhere. Even sandwiched between railway lines and roads....
The strange belief that we don’t build flats…
The reason that Vienna works is that the supply of housing is large enough, compared to the population, that the market is clearing.
The market clears in the UK/London. It just clears a price that most people aren't happy with.
No - there are people who are homeless. Not vagrants, but in all kinds of horrible accommodation. Because they can't get a vaguely decent place.
What we need is a situation where there is a non trivial number of properties empty. Because they are the bottom of the market. Currently, *anything* sells or rents. The vacant properties are a tiny percentage, mostly to with rebuild or personal/legal circumstances.
I wonder if a future government will row back voter ID? Probably not an issue anyone will have much enthusiasm for.
Enfranchisement is (obviously, you’d think) a fundamental feature of democracy. Incidentally, it must be a decade or so since Cameron came out with his ‘physically sick’ remarks around prisoners voting. Another area where tbh I accept I am I probably pretty firmly in the minority, but I don’t agree with taking the vote away from convicts.
It’s an interesting philosophical question
If you take the view that government is a construct of the people to deliver community services then the ultimate punishment that the government can impose is to exclude people from the benefits of society either by exile or by imprisonment.
If someone is excluded from society why should they have a say in the formation of the government?
Now clearly this means that anyone with a prison term of less than 5 years should keep their vote without question. But anyone who is expected to be in prison for the entire term of the next parliament? I’m not so sure.
On the other hand, I'd argue that Labour shouldn't abolish voter ID, but instruct the boundary commission to base seats on census data, not on registered voters. That's a technical change that would make a huge difference, because city constituencies are underrated because of so many people moving around, especially the young. It just isn't a priority for most people to register instntly when they move, but at any given moment that means lots of people are underrepresented.
Ummm.
But surely that means that people who have just left a constituency are still counted? So net, net the effect is probably close to zero.
Also that the census is counting occupants rather than citizens with the right to vote. Which is currently a subject of much discussion in the US at the moment, with regard to a rather large number of undocumented arrivals. They currently set Congressional seat numbers per state based on population rather than voter rolls
Surely we should count citizens, not just registered voters?
Otherwise, you are effectively underrepresenting areas with lots of kids, and over-representing areas with lots of oldies.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Countries presumably!
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
For the 12,556,445th time
Opposing the U.K. ID card was rational. This is because the problem with every proposal and the attempted implementation was the insane database nonsense that came with it.
The attempt to link everything to everything else, with terrible security would have made the NHS big IT projects look good. And provided one stop shopping for data thieves. And been utterly incompatible with GDPR….
I would suggest that an ID project could work. The high level requirements -
1) photo id card, credit card format 2) id code unique per person, with checksums etc 3) privacy secured method of verifying id - free to anyone. So anyone can verify an id shown to them. 4) anyone suggesting any Minority Report shit, get nail gunned. To the ceiling. With rusty nails.
Nearly every country with a requirement for voter ID has national ID cards. Are we uniquely incompetent that we cannot manage a system that nearly all other European countries do?
Often countries with stronger democracies than ours too.
Because, each time it is proposed, a whole raft of crap is attached.
An actual ID card would work. But without the crap, it wouldn't fill enough rice bowls in the system of government or something.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Countries presumably!
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
For the 12,556,445th time
Opposing the U.K. ID card was rational. This is because the problem with every proposal and the attempted implementation was the insane database nonsense that came with it.
The attempt to link everything to everything else, with terrible security would have made the NHS big IT projects look good. And provided one stop shopping for data thieves. And been utterly incompatible with GDPR….
I would suggest that an ID project could work. The high level requirements -
1) photo id card, credit card format 2) id code unique per person, with checksums etc 3) privacy secured method of verifying id - free to anyone. So anyone can verify an id shown to them. 4) anyone suggesting any Minority Report shit, get nail gunned. To the ceiling. With rusty nails.
Nearly every country with a requirement for voter ID has national ID cards. Are we uniquely incompetent that we cannot manage a system that nearly all other European countries do?
Often countries with stronger democracies than ours too.
Because, each time it is proposed, a whole raft of crap is attached.
An actual ID card would work. But without the crap, it wouldn't fill enough rice bowls in the system of government or something.
So you are saying that we are uniquely incompetent!
Perhaps we could outsource our national ID card to the French...
I wonder if a future government will row back voter ID? Probably not an issue anyone will have much enthusiasm for.
Enfranchisement is (obviously, you’d think) a fundamental feature of democracy. Incidentally, it must be a decade or so since Cameron came out with his ‘physically sick’ remarks around prisoners voting. Another area where tbh I accept I am I probably pretty firmly in the minority, but I don’t agree with taking the vote away from convicts.
It’s an interesting philosophical question
If you take the view that government is a construct of the people to deliver community services then the ultimate punishment that the government can impose is to exclude people from the benefits of society either by exile or by imprisonment.
If someone is excluded from society why should they have a say in the formation of the government?
Now clearly this means that anyone with a prison term of less than 5 years should keep their vote without question. But anyone who is expected to be in prison for the entire term of the next parliament? I’m not so sure.
On the other hand, I'd argue that Labour shouldn't abolish voter ID, but instruct the boundary commission to base seats on census data, not on registered voters. That's a technical change that would make a huge difference, because city constituencies are underrated because of so many people moving around, especially the young. It just isn't a priority for most people to register instntly when they move, but at any given moment that means lots of people are underrepresented.
Agree. And with reference to the header, turnout at GEs is obviously a measure of those who are registered to vote - it doesn't include those not on the electoral register who would be eligible to vote if they were. I suspect that's quite a high, and increasing, number, which would depress further the actual % turnout if we could measure it. Which of course we can't.
All political parties should put more effort into ensuring that all eligible voters are actually registered so that they can participate.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
I wasn't very convinced by that article personally. A debunking by somebody on twitter is in this thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770175108939681937.html (in particular the graph referenced there about changes to planning policy in Croydon and effects on house prrices is new to me).
The study linked to by the Guardian article is less tendentious and more interesting but also ultimately unconvincing to me. I remain of the opinion that we need to build more and make it easier to build more.
That's very interesting, and I sympathise with the critic. The original article cites Vienna as a good example, and I agree that Vienna, whose housing policies I know quite well, is very pro-tenant: among other things, landlords need to get official permission to raise rents more than inflation. But the really striking thing about Vienna is the vastly greater supply of rental accommodation in high/medium-rise blocks (cf. the response's Croydon graph). Our focus on individual houses and gardens is IMO the core issue.
London is building blocks of flats everywhere. Even sandwiched between railway lines and roads....
The strange belief that we don’t build flats…
The reason that Vienna works is that the supply of housing is large enough, compared to the population, that the market is clearing.
The market clears in the UK/London. It just clears a price that most people aren't happy with.
No - there are people who are homeless. Not vagrants, but in all kinds of horrible accommodation. Because they can't get a vaguely decent place.
What we need is a situation where there is a non trivial number of properties empty. Because they are the bottom of the market. Currently, *anything* sells or rents. The vacant properties are a tiny percentage, mostly to with rebuild or personal/legal circumstances.
There are lots of empty properties in the UK.
There are not lots of empty properties in London.
But I suspect that is true of essentially every prosperous city in the world. If there are lots of jobs and lots of opportunity (and gazillions of students), then people will have no problems in renting out properties.
That said, I take your point about homelessness. There are - I'm sure - people in London who live in cars and the like because they cannot afford housing.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
I'm not so sure about that (though I certainly don't expect Labour to make such an announcement).
But after the general election there will be hardly any advocates for Brexit left in public life. When the Tory ministers are gone who is going to argue that it was a good idea? The absurd Lord Frost ranting in his attic at the Daily Telegraph perhaps? But who else?
It will become a commonplace that Brexit was a mistake and a closer relationship with the EU is needed. And if the Tories are serious about regaining power they are going to have to accept that as well - they will need the votes of the 60% of voters who now think Brexit was wrong.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Sadly yes. @RochdalePioneers is right in theory about investment producing more taxes but the ability to borrow for a government or a business is determined by the state of their balance sheet. And, post Covid and Ukraine/gas subsidies ours is truly terrible hovering around 100% of GDP. If our debt were below 60% of GDP I would be more than happy for us to borrow to invest- our infrastructure certainly needs it. But we are where we are and it is not a good place.
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
Nah.
As things improve under Labour people will look back with utter horror at the latter day Conservative Gov’t and lumped in with that will be the Brexit vote, which looks increasingly disastrous.
With every passing year more of the old Alf Garnetts die off.
It’s a no-brainer that we will rejoin in some form or other and this time the economic merits will be made loud and clear by a Government that believes in them.
Yes but you don't introduce unnecessary risk - and proposing an imminent return to SM/FOM would be a humdinger of a risk for Labour - when you're 20 points ahead with an election just around the corner.
For sure.
I don’t think they will introduce the idea until either the end of their first term, or into their second.
Although I don't like Mogg at all, I do give him credit for being the only one who was honest about voter ID.
It was very helpful he said it out loud. Far too many on here swallowed the idea that this was about voter fraud.
Amazing when there was so little actual evidence of it.
Since when has evidence played any part in the decision making of Sunak and Braverman?
Yes, it was a classic example of a cure for which there was no known disease.
Actually there was a known disease, let's be honest.
The recommendation for voter ID came from the Electoral Commission itself in 2012 not from any Party and was in response to a spate of voter fraud cases and fear of more in the future.
However, the way it's been implemented, targeting in person voting and not postal, is utterly hamfisted.
It's been done in many places which are definitely democratic, so the idea it was inherently some moral outrage was overblown and distracted from the specifics being badly done and the glaring omissions.
I'd go so far as to say the focus on generic criticism as if requiring ID would always be an outrage helped the government present it as not a big deal and avoid some more significant points.
Not that no-one will have raised specifics, but by and large it was an example of poor tactics in holding them to account by going overbroad in criticism.
I’m trying to think of counties which don’t use ID for voting. Does anyone have a list?
Countries presumably!
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
For the 12,556,445th time
Opposing the U.K. ID card was rational. This is because the problem with every proposal and the attempted implementation was the insane database nonsense that came with it.
The attempt to link everything to everything else, with terrible security would have made the NHS big IT projects look good. And provided one stop shopping for data thieves. And been utterly incompatible with GDPR….
I would suggest that an ID project could work. The high level requirements -
1) photo id card, credit card format 2) id code unique per person, with checksums etc 3) privacy secured method of verifying id - free to anyone. So anyone can verify an id shown to them. 4) anyone suggesting any Minority Report shit, get nail gunned. To the ceiling. With rusty nails.
Nearly every country with a requirement for voter ID has national ID cards. Are we uniquely incompetent that we cannot manage a system that nearly all other European countries do?
Often countries with stronger democracies than ours too.
Because, each time it is proposed, a whole raft of crap is attached.
An actual ID card would work. But without the crap, it wouldn't fill enough rice bowls in the system of government or something.
So you are saying that we are uniquely incompetent!
Perhaps we could outsource our national ID card to the French...
The reason is not so much nationality as the time in which we are implementing it. Welcome to the age of Big Process.
When ID was brought in, in most counties, a unique ID on a card was just about all that could be done and that was an effort.
As a senior civil servant (Cabinet Office) told me - "That's too simple for a proper, modern project". A database and ID card for just the purpose of ID would be a small project. It would be implemented by a few hundred people. To run it, you might need more. Mostly for enrolment processing. But you'd design the system to scale easily as it built out.
You can't have a government policy that doesn't require a shiny new Richard Rogers style building? Without its own logo? What's the point, if no-one gets to run an empire?
Reeves in the papers this morning promising not to repeat the many mistakes of new labour.
She’s a smart operator.
She confirms what so many in Labour have denied for years.
As Cyclefree so often reminds us, you can address a problem until you acknowledge it exists.
If I thought that Reeves was seriously going to address our biggest key weakness, namely our trade deficit, which Brown persuaded himself did not matter in a world of floating currencies, I would be tempted to vote for her myself. It would involve serious pain to do it in terms of reduced consumption and much reduced borrowing so I will believe it when I see it.
Blaming New Labour for importing cheap Chinese consumer products doesn't reveal the source of the problem.
De-industrialisation and the sale of UK assets overseas in the 1980s started the ball rolling. Resolving the industrial manufacturing strife of the 1970s by eradicating industrial manufacturing for domestic consumption was a crap idea in the first place, but it turns out one wholly incompatible with Brexit.
Good luck to Reeves if she ever becomes CoE, but I don't see how this genie is ever returned to the bottle.
I think that is over simplifying her argument. But what we need to do is encourage domestic investment and production so that we get import substitution, try to build productivity so that we are more competitive and incentivise training and capital whilst addressing infrastructure problems.
We also need to reduce consumption to what we are actually earning which means we cannot have demand boosted by £100bn+ of government borrowing. So more taxes and less public spending. Not an easy sell by any means which is why politicians of all stripes have ducked it.
We need to drop the "less public spending" rhetoric. This country is crying out for investment. That is spending. We absolutely shouldn't borrow to spend on day to day stuff, but absolutely should borrow to invest in capex which delivers a return on investment.
Part of why this country is broken is the Tory whine about "who will pay for that" in response to spending on anything. Borrowing to invest and delivering a return on investment used to be what the Tories stood for - capitalism. Whatever happened to the Tories...?
We need to increase investment within the spending envelope, not by expanding it. We are simply far too over borrowed to do the alternative and that debt is inhibiting growth. That means less current spending and more investment spending. Once again, not an easy sell.
Good morning
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
Because the "solution " is not feasible unless we can persuade the voter that poor people should be allowed to fend for themselves, and still pay their albeit reduced taxes.
If labour really wanted to change the dial, and with their dominance in the polls and the demand for change, they should announce they will rejoin the single market and introduce a wealth tax
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
Truss/ Kwarteng is the salutary lesson here. Assuming she becomes Chancellor, which is far from a done deal, Labour cannot frighten the horses, or at least the bond markets.
Once in Downing Street the cake can (if necessary) remain the same size, but the portions can be distributed differently.
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
Ed Davey advocated joining the Single Market in his speech on Sunday, so a clear differentiation from current Labour policy there.
But Ed Davey can say that because he has as much hope of forming the next government as I do.
O/T With apologies, I am going to post this again because the more I think about it the more intriguing it seems.
A different take on the housing crisis: "Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism"
And:
"In terms of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the UK has roughly the average number of homes per capita: 468 per 1,000 people in 2019. We have a comparable amount of housing to the Netherlands, Hungary or Canada, and our housing stock far exceeds many more affordable places such as Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic."
Maybe we don't need to increase housebuilding massively. If this is true it's a much easier problem for Labour to solve - still tricky, but not as hard as building over the greenbelt. I hope Angela Rayner is reading this (the Guardian article, not my post).
That is a really interesting article. I have just ordered his book.
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
Ummm: that's pre-tax
As interest income is taxable, then for the vast majority of savers, then they will still be seeing real terms erosion of their savings.
The personal savings allowance and ISAs mean that for the clear majority of savers they are getting their interest mostly if not all tax free.
Is that going to be the clear majority? Most people earn more than the personal allowance, and I doubt that more than 20% of total savings are in ISAs,
But I get your point that a significant number of people will recieve interest on their savings largely tax free.
The fact the Commonwealth summit is in mid October and the King needs to attend really should not be an issue. Sunak knows it has been in the diary for months
Indeed. From Sunak's point of view, if he's decided to have an autumn election, any autumn date is as good as any other. But there some dates best avoided for other practical or political reasons:
Avoid: - Any date before mid-October: Parliament would have to be recalled from summer recess to dissolve; conference season would have to be cancelled - reasonable notice required. - 17th Oct - KC about to go to Samoa, could be tricky if it's a hung parliament requiring long negotiation. - 24th Oct - KC in Samoa. - 31st Oct - Halloween: nightmare on Downing St - 7th Nov - two days after the US POTUS election, not a good idea. - 19th Dec - too close to Christmas - 26th Dec - obviously not - 2nd Jan - Er no. - 9th Jan - Christmas/NY would severely restrict campaigning. - 16th Jan - As above, also smacks of last-chance saloon. - 23rd - ditto.
So I reckon it will have to be: 14th, 21st, 28th Nov, or 5th, 12th Dec.
12th December has a degree of symbolism to it - 5 years to the day the Tories won an 80 seat majority.
It's going to be 12th December, isn't it?
This is good analysis. It’s not about 1 day, it’s the 25 campaigning days that can’t overlap a holiday period.
And if you want a cheeky budget, it’s extra few weeks before campaign month to get parliament sitting to pass it. But is there time to see it in household budgets, or better not to have budget, just promise the details in manifesto? Recent Budgets are quite internally contentious for Tories, defence spending needs the limited pot of money, pensioners need it, by the time autumn comes the households hurt by high mortgage deals will ask for it,
Parliament is now due back 2nd September, the six weeks before that you just can’t hold one. You are right to flag up there arn’t that many dates.
However, conferences can go ahead inside campaign month - why not? The only party who would want to cancel conference would be Tories, for despite how much of money it makes for the party, it would just be giving opposition parties too much fantastic election boost.
Thanks. I thought about the conferences issue.
You may right, perhaps they could go ahead during the campaign but I foresee all sorts of balance issues for the broadcasters. Plus, how do the parties juggle being out on the stump and locked away together at their conference? No, I think they'll can the conferences as soon as the GE is called...
...which brings us back to the other issue: Parliament has to be recalled early from summer recess to push the dissolution through.
If Sunak is going to do that he might as well name the day now.
If the conferences and everything with it, is to be canned, that will have to be public knowledge quite early on for the cancellations to happen, and further bookings and arrangements avoided? Before summer recess?
True dat. Hence why I suspect the later autumn dates are favourite.
All could change after a disastrous set of Locals though. If the Tories crash badly, let's see how quickly they all turn on Sunak.
To avoid fall out from the May 2nd elections was one of the reasons for May 2nd General election.
I’m getting mixed messages from PB on what the situation was last time these elections were fought - it’s clear now not the high point of Boris with the Hartlepool win that nearly finished Starmer, these actually a limited set of elections May 2nd where Tories cannot lose the symbolic 1000 seats or anything like that. Even losing the mayor elections isn’t going to be amazingly news worthy sort of with expectations not exceeding them in any shock results.
But it adds to pressure already there from Truss level opinion polling, I think it will result in a vonc after May 2nd. And as HY says, the smart money says Sunak easily survives it, though even more lame dunk like. 100% certain now Rishi leads them into General Election.
There are, including London, 11 mayoral elections. The Tories hold 2, Labour 6, and 3 are new mayoral positions. I think the Conservatives are expected to win 0-1? It will be a powerful message if they win 0.
The PCC elections get little attention. There are 39, I think. Currently Labour hold 8 and Plaid 1. (Wikipedia says there's 1 independent, but I think they're wrong.) So, 30 Conservatives, a huge area of local strength. Could those figures look very bad for the Tories, or might they represent an oasis of successful defences?
The worst it can be is two meaningless mayor losses> -2 up in lights? It’s not even a front page story.
These “local elections” have been bigged up as end of Sunak, when they are nothing of the sort.
But what about all the PCC elections?! People talk of little else round my way. Gripped, they are. Gripped.
Don't you just "love" extended "debate" between "Leon" and "Truman"????
"The hobbitses are nice!" "No, they make us walk in nasty sun, my precious" "But they saved us!" "No. We saved us." "They are our friends" "WE HAVE NO FRIENDS"
Except one is probably being generated hence the weird turns of phrase.
Comments
The same people very often. In one factory they miserably produced expensive, not very good cars. In another they produced modern cars to high quality, at a good price.
Here, we're in a halfway place where everything is seen as too expensive to invest in, but everyone including the Tories is still committed to doing all the basic stuff and discretionary stuff of government (other than DEI courses).
So certain things and day to day gets support but long term stuff is losing support.
Possibly due to past cock ups in fairness.
But what should have been a policy criticism was made a moral argument, and I think the everyperson on the street would not but that, even with Rees-Moggs admission of the (obvious) motives.
There is no honesty in Labour's offer to the voters.
British Leyland were seen as analogous to all that was wrong with industrial relations. Scraps were thrown to keep it going, Jaguar was spun off and later sold. The skeleton was handed in Austin-Rover form to BAe, who subsequently sold it to an overseas buyer. Ironically to one who started in the car business by building Austin Sevens under licence.
But then the Government couldn't throw enough cash at Nissan, Toyota and Honda and in the case of the first two keep doing so. Remind me what happened to Honda in Swindon?
I know no one likes the idea of higher taxes but that is the only answer to this problem. "But taxes are at a post-war high' I hear you say. And so are the demands: health, social care, pensions - due to our changing demographic.
Taxing the wealthy is the only way to resolve this crisis.
On the of the shouty parties got outraged. The chap in charge of the process held a press conference, and gave out the number for his office - said that anyone could call to complain about not having a vote. After some studying of navels, and whistling casually.... crickets...
No complaints from me.
Mr. Pioneers, that sounds horrendous. (I was going to just 'like' the post but that always seems a bit odd for that sort of thing).
It's because they spend all their time on being beastly to foreigners and Culture War, rather than on the day job.
Reeves said yesterday we are presently paying £82 billion in debt interest and she is clearly not going to risk a Truss disaster so you are very much right to identify the solution but sadly our political class just cannot bring themselves round to following your solution
I'd much rather that someone, anyone, was honest about the need to rebalance taxes up and spending down. But it's not as if the government are any better.
I do hope that Reeves is rehearsing her "shocked at the state of the books" face and speech.
It's well below the reality of how train, food and council tax prices are still increasing.
That's where the trouble is.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/19/us-prison-water-rat-fur-arsenic-copper
'Of the dozen years Broderick Hollins spent in (mostly) Illinois prisons and jails, he will never forget the tap water. Brown water at Stateville correctional center tasted like onions. It also sometimes came with clumps of rat hairs, flowing into residents’ cells via lead pipes.
“That’s where I got sick” with extreme lead poisoning, Hollins said of his six years at Stateville. It gave him migraines powerful enough to cause nosebleeds, deep-red eyes, and blurry vision; when he was released in 2020, he required painful chelation therapy injections to flush the lead from his body.'
Greggs says it is "experiencing issues accepting payments" amid reports shops have been forced to shut across the country.
In a statement, the bakery chain added: "We are working to resolve this as soon as possible."
Users on X around the country reported that their local branches were shut or heavily affected.
"Greggs in Westminster closed. Problem with tills," one person wrote, while another added: "Greggs this morning cash only ! Sitting here with my coffee watching almost everyone have to walk out."
It comes after "technical issues" affected Sainsbury's in store contactless payments and online delivery services at the weekend, causing chaos for shoppers.
https://news.sky.com/story/greggs-outlets-closed-around-the-uk-after-it-glitch-at-tills-13098440
It can do a lot to make it much worse though.
No appeal against the fines can be lodged until the self-assessment is submitted. Once the self-assessment is submitted, use form SA370 to lodge an appeal against the fine, which could well be regarded as 'unconscionable' in situations where the client does not earn enough to pay very much tax.
Cashless society? Welcome to Barter Town.
While council tax is a tax and we're continually told that people are happy to pay more tax.
The study linked to by the Guardian article is less tendentious and more interesting but also ultimately unconvincing to me. I remain of the opinion that we need to build more and make it easier to build more.
This would be expected of a Labour government but Reeves seems to want to outdo Thatcher in her fiscal restraint
We now have inflation below savings rates. For the first time in 15 years it seems that savers will get a real return on their savings rather than erosion.
The end of cheap money is a good thing for house prices (less so for affordability criteria) and for reducing the consumerism that @DavidL so deplores for its effect on trade balance, and I for its other pernicious effects on society and the environment.
A wealth tax is obvious
Though most countries do have mandatory ID cards, something that we as a country irrationally oppose.
Clever would be to do it on outputs.
Say that the government will pay x for each ton of raw steel produced. Make it green steel - zero carbon. Subsidy level based on U.K. content.
Clever because it would take years to setup the plant and start producing. Years until the subsidy would actually come into play…
See car batteries for another example of this.
House prices and rents are set on the margins. It really doesn't take much for rents to rapidly increase. 2-3 desperate tenants able to pay more and the new market rate is suddenly £50-100 more than it previously was...
Once in Downing Street the cake can (if necessary) remain the same size, but the portions can be distributed differently.
As to rejoining a single market with FOM, they announce that only if they want to return a Conservative Government.
https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/2222/rail-fares-index-2023.pdf
I’m in the neighbouring Newton Abbot constituency and under the boundary changes it is a lot more marginal. A quite plausible Lab GAIN. I’d be delighted to see Anne Morris get the boot.
(ETA: and therefore short of the numbers required to impact property prices.)
Opposing the U.K. ID card was rational. This is because the problem with every proposal and the attempted implementation was the insane database nonsense that came with it.
The attempt to link everything to everything else, with terrible security would have made the NHS big IT projects look good. And provided one stop shopping for data thieves. And been utterly incompatible with GDPR….
I would suggest that an ID project could work. The high level requirements -
1) photo id card, credit card format
2) id code unique per person, with checksums etc
3) privacy secured method of verifying id - free to anyone. So anyone can verify an id shown to them.
4) anyone suggesting any Minority Report shit, get nail gunned. To the ceiling. With rusty nails.
As things improve under Labour people will look back with utter horror at the latter day Conservative Gov’t and lumped in with that will be the Brexit vote, which looks increasingly disastrous.
With every passing year more of the old Alf Garnetts die off.
It’s a no-brainer that we will rejoin in some form or other and this time the economic merits will be made loud and clear by a Government that believes in them.
The population of England and Wales at mid-year 2022 was estimated to be 60.2 million, an increase of around 578,000 (1.0%) since mid-year 2021.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/populationestimatesforenglandandwales/mid2022
and 191,801 new homes in 2022 were built https://www.nhbc.co.uk/binaries/content/assets/nhbc/media-centre/stats/nhbc-annual-statistics-2022-data-booklet.pdf
So that is both your "facts" destroyed with actual figures with 30 seconds of searching.
When I see how corrupt power has been wielded so abusively in recent years and the disgusting infringements of civil liberties I would have no intention of ever having an ID card. I have also refused to update the DVLC with my current address and they can f-off with their Big Brother threats. I don’t drive so meh.
Remember Jim Radcliffe. "I'm going to start a car company, a British car company called Ineos and I will name my car the Grenadier, you can't get more British than that. I will build my car on the old Ford engine plant in Bridgend. British jobs for British people! Wait, you have M. Macron on the line, how much? What about British jobs for French people?"
I have a meeting shortly with external parties one of whom absolutely detests brashness/cockiness.
It is called investment. Business is often highly leveraged with debt, but does so because it will grow its revenues.
Hilariously, the author also claims that building more properties to reduce prices cant't work, since this would run counter to the interest of the house builders. It appears that he has never encountered a market with falling prices. That house builders will *try* to stop house prices falling is obvious - to everyone since Adam Smith. The point is to modify the rules of the housing market to make such a strategy fail. The Victorians and Edwardians managed this. By no creating local monopolies on the construction of the properties.
It also manages not to talk about the reason that, in Poland (say), property prices are not zooming to the skies. That is, when someone wants to build property in Poland, the system is wired in the yes direction. Very hard to ramp prices, if someone is building more houses or flats, locally, in response to demand.
Funny that, isn't it?
How can he not be impressed by your footwear?
If you have mandatory ID cards (or de facto mandatory ID cards, as with driving licenses in the US), then every citizen has to do the same amount of "work" to vote. They all need to bring along their government issued, compulsory, ID card.
If, on the other hand, you do not, then there is substantial more work required for those people who don't drive.
There are many solutions to this: one could require everyone to bring along their voting card that was sent to their home. (Equal burdens on all.) One could have provisional ballots that are only verified and counted in the event a result is close. One could have returning officers that take polaroids of voters without ID and get voters to sign on the back that they are the person they say they are (with some random checks after the event).
Or one could recognise that instances of personation are extremely rare and the solution will disenfranchise many more people (probably many order of magnitude more) than the problem it is meant to solve.
The strange belief that we don’t build flats…
The reason that Vienna works is that the supply of housing is large enough, compared to the population, that the market is clearing.
As interest income is taxable, then for the vast majority of savers, then they will still be seeing real terms erosion of their savings.
But surely that means that people who have just left a constituency are still counted? So net, net the effect is probably close to zero.
Other relevant differences: - everyone who is eligible to vote already has ID
- there is no registering to vote. You have to register where you live to be legally resident in Germany and you automatically get sent the appropriate polling cards.
So the British ID requirement is both stricter (you have to show ID in the UK) and more exclusive (not everyone in the UK has photo ID). Plus no automatic voter registration.
There are countries which don't require ID (Australia I think is one) or have systems like allowing someone with ID to vouch for you in the polling station.
Are there any European countries which have such a strict (in person) voter ID rule as the UK as well as no national ID card?
Often countries with stronger democracies than ours too.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis
Over the last 25 years, there has not just been a constant surplus of homes per household, but the ratio has been modestly growing
What we need is a situation where there is a non trivial number of properties empty. Because they are the bottom of the market. Currently, *anything* sells or rents. The vacant properties are a tiny percentage, mostly to with rebuild or personal/legal circumstances.
Otherwise, you are effectively underrepresenting areas with lots of kids, and over-representing areas with lots of oldies.
An actual ID card would work. But without the crap, it wouldn't fill enough rice bowls in the system of government or something.
Perhaps we could outsource our national ID card to the French...
All political parties should put more effort into ensuring that all eligible voters are actually registered so that they can participate.
There are not lots of empty properties in London.
But I suspect that is true of essentially every prosperous city in the world. If there are lots of jobs and lots of opportunity (and gazillions of students), then people will have no problems in renting out properties.
That said, I take your point about homelessness. There are - I'm sure - people in London who live in cars and the like because they cannot afford housing.
But after the general election there will be hardly any advocates for Brexit left in public life. When the Tory ministers are gone who is going to argue that it was a good idea? The absurd Lord Frost ranting in his attic at the Daily Telegraph perhaps? But who else?
It will become a commonplace that Brexit was a mistake and a closer relationship with the EU is needed. And if the Tories are serious about regaining power they are going to have to accept that as well - they will need the votes of the 60% of voters who now think Brexit was wrong.
I don’t think they will introduce the idea until either the end of their first term, or into their second.
When ID was brought in, in most counties, a unique ID on a card was just about all that could be done and that was an effort.
As a senior civil servant (Cabinet Office) told me - "That's too simple for a proper, modern project". A database and ID card for just the purpose of ID would be a small project. It would be implemented by a few hundred people. To run it, you might need more. Mostly for enrolment processing. But you'd design the system to scale easily as it built out.
You can't have a government policy that doesn't require a shiny new Richard Rogers style building? Without its own logo? What's the point, if no-one gets to run an empire?
But I get your point that a significant number of people will recieve interest on their savings largely tax free.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/greggs-shops-close-across-the-uk-as-it-glitch-causes-payment-issues/ar-BB1kdbjp?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=c2b2a89df9744b739d1382c0112af406&ei=25