This act is criticised often by the same people as being anti free speech, but not including women in the list of protected characteristics, of being so vague that anyone could be caught up in it and too prescriptive in the protections it provides.
It also incorporates a large amount of existing legislation on hate crimes.
Which is not to say the critics are necessarily wrong or that this is a good bit of legislation. But I do think it's a bit more nuanced than many in this board are making it out to be.
I assume from all the pearl clutching about misogyny not (yet) being included in the Holyrood bill, that it's part of existing Westminster legislation?
Not really, There is the Domestic Abuse (S) Act which criminalises a lot of behaviour that otherwise would not be a crime where that behaviour takes place in a relationship if it is deemed controlling or abusive. There is also the general provision of s38 which I referred to below. And, of course, you can have a range of civil penalties if you discriminate against women in some way. But seeking to stir up hatred of women, or a particular class of women (such as those who would seek to exclude someone claiming the gender of woman) is not, so far as I am aware currently a crime.
Not a Scottish lawyer, so not getting involved; but reading the opinion (does the word 'opine' ever arise non-ironically other than from Scottish lawyers?) suggests that the act itself is, with regard to convictions, reasonably harmless as long as Roddy Dunlop is your lawyer.
(But the greater substance of the criticism of this bad act is the 'chilling' effect on ordinary people who will be rendered doubtful in expressing views, and in the keeping of records by police of non-criminal activity in a world where no-one will trust what use will be made of them.)
I think we can rely on Wings Over Scotland and others to test all this out in court.
Welcome to the world of consultancy. We opine every day.
Opining is important. It makes it clear that you are not telling a client what they should do. And won't end up in court when things go pear shaped for them.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
Alternatively, Yankland is being torn in two by mutually antagonistic tribes, who loathe each other so much that they'd happily vote for a reincarnated Pol Pot if they thought he was their best chance of defeating the other lot. It's the logical endpoint of the Culture Wars bullshit. We must make sure we don't go there.
We mustn't - but I don't agree there's an equivalence to both sides as regards this presidential election. Not even a semblance of one tbh. Neither Joe Biden nor his administration are extremist alt-left ultra-wokies. He's a mainstream Democrat who's run a sane and competent government in what he deems (rightly or wrongly) to be the national interest. The contrast with Donald Trump and the goons around him is stark. Even if I was well to the Right, therefore opposed to lots of Biden's policies, and had (the very justifiable) concerns about his age/frailty there is no way on earth I'd contemplate not voting for him in November if Trump is on the ticket as the GOP alternative.
This act is criticised often by the same people as being anti free speech, but not including women in the list of protected characteristics, of being so vague that anyone could be caught up in it and too prescriptive in the protections it provides.
It also incorporates a large amount of existing legislation on hate crimes.
Which is not to say the critics are necessarily wrong or that this is a good bit of legislation. But I do think it's a bit more nuanced than many in this board are making it out to be.
The two questions I am interested in are:
Does this act provide protections that weren't available before? No-one seems to be discussing this, but I would think it crucial to whether this act is worth having.
The chilling effect that seems to be the substantive criticism. Is this a direct effect of the law or due to a misconception of the law? A problem if it's the first, but not if it's the second, in my view.
Given how police frequently misunderstand law and guidance, and that most people will not educate themselves on the nuances of legislation, I'd give more critical weight to problems arising from misconceptions.
Positives would need to be significant to make up for even indirect effects of a new law i think. Indirect effects are relevant in many contexts after all.
I disagree in principle with this. If the legislation is useful (my first question) then it becomes an education exercise. We shouldn't be drafting or not drafting law on hypothetical and unwarranted misconceptions.
Not a Scottish lawyer, so not getting involved; but reading the opinion (does the word 'opine' ever arise non-ironically other than from Scottish lawyers?) suggests that the act itself is, with regard to convictions, reasonably harmless as long as Roddy Dunlop is your lawyer.
(But the greater substance of the criticism of this bad act is the 'chilling' effect on ordinary people who will be rendered doubtful in expressing views, and in the keeping of records by police of non-criminal activity in a world where no-one will trust what use will be made of them.)
I think we can rely on Wings Over Scotland and others to test all this out in court.
Welcome to the world of consultancy. We opine every day.
Opining is important. It makes it clear that you are not telling a client what they should do. And won't end up in court when things go pear shaped for them.
Not a Scottish lawyer, so not getting involved; but reading the opinion (does the word 'opine' ever arise non-ironically other than from Scottish lawyers?) suggests that the act itself is, with regard to convictions, reasonably harmless as long as Roddy Dunlop is your lawyer.
(But the greater substance of the criticism of this bad act is the 'chilling' effect on ordinary people who will be rendered doubtful in expressing views, and in the keeping of records by police of non-criminal activity in a world where no-one will trust what use will be made of them.)
I think we can rely on Wings Over Scotland and others to test all this out in court.
Welcome to the world of consultancy. We opine every day.
Opining is important. It makes it clear that you are not telling a client what they should do. And won't end up in court when things go pear shaped for them.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
All the legal stuff may have played into his hands by making him look like a victim. I haven't followed it closely enough to know how directly culpable the Democrats have been in it but they certainly are culpable for the limitations of their own selected candidate.
This act is criticised often by the same people as being anti free speech, but not including women in the list of protected characteristics, of being so vague that anyone could be caught up in it and too prescriptive in the protections it provides.
It also incorporates a large amount of existing legislation on hate crimes.
Which is not to say the critics are necessarily wrong or that this is a good bit of legislation. But I do think it's a bit more nuanced than many in this board are making it out to be.
The two questions I am interested in are:
Does this act provide protections that weren't available before? No-one seems to be discussing this, but I would think it crucial to whether this act is worth having.
The chilling effect that seems to be the substantive criticism. Is this a direct effect of the law or due to a misconception of the law? A problem if it's the first, but not if it's the second, in my view.
Given how police frequently misunderstand law and guidance, and that most people will not educate themselves on the nuances of legislation, I'd give more critical weight to problems arising from misconceptions.
Positives would need to be significant to make up for even indirect effects of a new law i think. Indirect effects are relevant in many contexts after all.
I disagree in principle with this. If the legislation is useful (my first question) then it becomes an education exercise. We shouldn't be drafting or not drafting law on hypothetical and unwarranted misconceptions.
I disagree. We absolute should draft based on potential for misconception, in order to eliminate as much as possible that potential for misconception.
That is entirely normal as part of the drafting process, adding definitions, clarifications, restrictions, limitations,tacking on guidance and regulations.
I've no doubt the Act has done this, there has been talk of safeguards in there, presumably added due to worries about confusion or misconception.
So that's a normal thing to do. The question is if it has been sufficient. The Scottish government say that it is.
This act is criticised often by the same people as being anti free speech, but not including women in the list of protected characteristics, of being so vague that anyone could be caught up in it and too prescriptive in the protections it provides.
It also incorporates a large amount of existing legislation on hate crimes.
Which is not to say the critics are necessarily wrong or that this is a good bit of legislation. But I do think it's a bit more nuanced than many in this board are making it out to be.
I assume from all the pearl clutching about misogyny not (yet) being included in the Holyrood bill, that it's part of existing Westminster legislation?
Not really, There is the Domestic Abuse (S) Act which criminalises a lot of behaviour that otherwise would not be a crime where that behaviour takes place in a relationship if it is deemed controlling or abusive. There is also the general provision of s38 which I referred to below. And, of course, you can have a range of civil penalties if you discriminate against women in some way. But seeking to stir up hatred of women, or a particular class of women (such as those who would seek to exclude someone claiming the gender of woman) is not, so far as I am aware currently a crime.
The differences between English and Scottish law in this area seem to be rapidly diminishing. It’s almost like there’s a bit outrage manufacturing going on.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
That in turn has prompted calls this morning from two senior national Labour people promising help. So much in politics is about snowball effects.
Sounds like the old pals act to me.
What does Nick mean by this ? ...Communities will benefit from having a Labour MP who can represent the area’s concerns as a member of the new majority – not by the sort of discrimination in government funding that has been a particular disgraceful hallmark of the Tory years, but simply in terms of understanding local needs...
That's either disingenuous, or nonsense.
Not sure why you think that? My point is that if Labour wins a majority mainly consisting of seats in the cities and their suburbs, there will be a shortage of people who have direct experience of the issues that worry people in small towns and villages (my constituency is one such, but there are many others which aren't really rural but are certainly not cities either). We obviously aren't going to win every seat but we do need to have a sufficient variety to give a range of input into spending decisions.
I get what you are saying.
Indeed it is much the same as how gaining "Red Wall" seats changed the Conservative Party for a while, until the fall of Johnson and rise of Sunak killed off "Levelling Up".
A Labour government with significant numbers of new MPs from semi-rural constituencies of England is going to be a different parliamentary party to one confined to metropolitan University cities.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Ironically, with my background as a past North London city dweller, I might not like the difference personally, but I do recognise that it'd be healthy.
Labour had a significant rural vote in the past, even winning seats in Norfolk now considered bedrock Tory. Indeed 30% Lab in Harborough in 2017 realised my eyebrows, showing that it doesn't have to be Tory lite agenda to get votes out.
I wonder if they will quite a few rural areas. The LD underperformance there that means Labour are second in many will help push them as favourites.
Worth mentioning the Country Land & Business Association commissioned Survation to poll the 100 most rural constituencies in England and Wales at the end of January. The results showed a 40 point Conservative lead from December 2019 being replaced with a 3 point Labour lead at a swing of 21%. That's a swing but given what would be huge Conservative majorities I'm not sure what that would mean in terms of seat changes.
On those numbers Harborough Oadby & Wigston's 15,000 Conservative majority would become a 5,000 Labour majority if turnout was repeated. That's the 173rd safest Conservative seat based on notional numbers.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
Alternatively, Yankland is being torn in two by mutually antagonistic tribes, who loathe each other so much that they'd happily vote for a reincarnated Pol Pot if they thought he was their best chance of defeating the other lot. It's the logical endpoint of the Culture Wars bullshit. We must make sure we don't go there.
We mustn't - but I don't agree there's an equivalence to both sides as regards this presidential election. Not even a semblance of one tbh. Neither Joe Biden nor his administration are extremist alt-left ultra-wokies. He's a mainstream Democrat who's run a sane and competent government in what he deems (rightly or wrongly) to be the national interest. The contrast with Donald Trump and the goons around him is stark. Even if I was well to the Right, therefore opposed to lots of Biden's policies, and had (the very justifiable) concerns about his age/frailty there is no way on earth I'd contemplate not voting for him in November if Trump is on the ticket as the GOP alternative.
The truly bizarre thing is the delusional worship (its more than just support) of someone who doesn't care about them but is also a lot less likely to win and less likely to do anything even if he was elected.
There's probably some connection with 'sin' and 'martyrdom' and being 'born again' in the evangelical mind.
Trump has more in common with a grifting televangelist then with any normal politician.
That in turn has prompted calls this morning from two senior national Labour people promising help. So much in politics is about snowball effects.
Two initial thoughts come to mind with the Labour bar charts for Didcot:
a) As has been discussed here many of the projections from this poll are clearly nonsense eg Guildford, Wokingham, etc.
b) If people believe that bar charts then it will encourage soft Tories to vote LD to keep Labour out if they believe the chart that Labour are in the lead and the Tories 3rd.
Current (Survation/BestforBritain) figures do have Tories close behind Labour, with LibDems third on 17%. But I've literally never canvassed anyone in the last year (which was mostly in deep blue Godalming) who said they were scared at the thought of a Starmer government. The LibDems there have lots of positive support, and literally none of it to my eyes is to keep Labour out.
As for nonsense projections, drastic change always looks like nonsense till it happens. Would you have predicted Tories winning Ashfield, or Labour winning Canterbury? What MRP picks up is a basic leaning of the demographic to the various parties. Whether it translates into votes depends on whether the parties really go for it. That happens a lot in by-elections (e.g. Mid-Beds) but not usually in GEs. My article is essentially arguing that the current climate makes it right to go for it in seats we don't usually win.
That in turn has prompted calls this morning from two senior national Labour people promising help. So much in politics is about snowball effects.
Sounds like the old pals act to me.
What does Nick mean by this ? ...Communities will benefit from having a Labour MP who can represent the area’s concerns as a member of the new majority – not by the sort of discrimination in government funding that has been a particular disgraceful hallmark of the Tory years, but simply in terms of understanding local needs...
That's either disingenuous, or nonsense.
Not sure why you think that? My point is that if Labour wins a majority mainly consisting of seats in the cities and their suburbs, there will be a shortage of people who have direct experience of the issues that worry people in small towns and villages (my constituency is one such, but there are many others which aren't really rural but are certainly not cities either). We obviously aren't going to win every seat but we do need to have a sufficient variety to give a range of input into spending decisions.
I get what you are saying.
Indeed it is much the same as how gaining "Red Wall" seats changed the Conservative Party for a while, until the fall of Johnson and rise of Sunak killed off "Levelling Up".
A Labour government with significant numbers of new MPs from semi-rural constituencies of England is going to be a different parliamentary party to one confined to metropolitan University cities.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Ironically, with my background as a past North London city dweller, I might not like the difference personally, but I do recognise that it'd be healthy.
Labour had a significant rural vote in the past, even winning seats in Norfolk now considered bedrock Tory. Indeed 30% Lab in Harborough in 2017 realised my eyebrows, showing that it doesn't have to be Tory lite agenda to get votes out.
I wonder if they will quite a few rural areas. The LD underperformance there that means Labour are second in many will help push them as favourites.
Worth mentioning the Country Land & Business Association commissioned Survation to poll the 100 most rural constituencies in England and Wales at the end of January. The results showed a 40 point Conservative lead from December 2019 being replaced with a 3 point Labour lead at a swing of 21%. That's a swing but given what would be huge Conservative majorities I'm not sure what that would mean in terms of seat changes.
On those numbers Harborough Oadby & Wigston's 15,000 Conservative majority would become a 5,000 Labour majority if turnout was repeated. That's the 173rd safest Conservative seat based on notional numbers.
51 Labour to 43 Tory. I assume rest are LD and PC. Not sure about changes, but I'd imagine they'd be hefty.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
At least 45% put their faith in Trump. That may not be enough to win, but it’s perilously close.
This act is criticised often by the same people as being anti free speech, but not including women in the list of protected characteristics, of being so vague that anyone could be caught up in it and too prescriptive in the protections it provides.
It also incorporates a large amount of existing legislation on hate crimes.
Which is not to say the critics are necessarily wrong or that this is a good bit of legislation. But I do think it's a bit more nuanced than many in this board are making it out to be.
I assume from all the pearl clutching about misogyny not (yet) being included in the Holyrood bill, that it's part of existing Westminster legislation?
Not really, There is the Domestic Abuse (S) Act which criminalises a lot of behaviour that otherwise would not be a crime where that behaviour takes place in a relationship if it is deemed controlling or abusive. There is also the general provision of s38 which I referred to below. And, of course, you can have a range of civil penalties if you discriminate against women in some way. But seeking to stir up hatred of women, or a particular class of women (such as those who would seek to exclude someone claiming the gender of woman) is not, so far as I am aware currently a crime.
The differences between English and Scottish law in this area seem to be rapidly diminishing. It’s almost like there’s a bit outrage manufacturing going on.
I am not qualified as an English lawyer but I would disagree. It seems to me, in contrast, that Scots law is going its own way on this driven by legislation passed at Holyrood. The Domestic Abuse (S) Act 2018 is very different in its effect than the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, for example.
When a High Court judge gives his charge at the end of a trial one of his tasks involves explaining to the jury what the requirements of the offence are and what they need to be satisfied of, beyond a reasonable doubt, in respect of the charge. In the case of a DASA charge this involves the jury considering 7 different elements. Some judges have resorted to written directions on this because it is so complicated.
I fear that Judges may have to do something similar for the Hate Crime Act. The nature of the charge and the defences are going to be tricky to explain to 15 lay people. The risk of miscarriages of justice are significant. Criminal law is exceptionally fact specific but a situation where the outcome becomes fairly random is not justice.
The problem with both of these Acts, and indeed many similar provisions in other Acts, is that they seek to address a social harm but they then have to be applied to a wide range of facts which can be quite messy and contradictory. The path to a conviction becomes convoluted as does the risk of facing prosecution inadvertently.
I do think it is fair to say that many of the criticisms of this particular Act might well be made of other, existing, legislation. This does not make this Act a good thing but it is not, sadly, uniquely bad.
This act is criticised often by the same people as being anti free speech, but not including women in the list of protected characteristics, of being so vague that anyone could be caught up in it and too prescriptive in the protections it provides.
It also incorporates a large amount of existing legislation on hate crimes.
Which is not to say the critics are necessarily wrong or that this is a good bit of legislation. But I do think it's a bit more nuanced than many in this board are making it out to be.
The two questions I am interested in are:
Does this act provide protections that weren't available before? No-one seems to be discussing this, but I would think it crucial to whether this act is worth having.
The chilling effect that seems to be the substantive criticism. Is this a direct effect of the law or due to a misconception of the law? A problem if it's the first, but not if it's the second, in my view.
A misconception, I'd say, but it can still be a problem imo unless it's rectified. This law perhaps can perhaps be best judged when it's in and bedded down. Will it lead to lots of police time being wasted and/or a serious diminution in people's freedom to express controversial opinions? Or will the main impact be that nasty bigoted people who want to say nasty bigoted things to stoke hatred against groups they are prejudiced against, thus making the world that little bit worse for their efforts, are somewhat discouraged from doing so? Or maybe it won't have much effect at all. I don't know and neither do most of those commenting on either side - or just the one side here on PB, where I'm guessing there's close to blanket agreement with cyclefree's header.
I see there have been no more attacks on Russian oil refineries since the US urged Ukraine to stop what had been a highly successful series of strikes. At the same time Russia has been busy trying to destroy much of Ukraine's electricity production.
(2)A person commits an offence if— (a)the person— (i)behaves in a manner that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive, or (ii)communicates to another person material that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive, and (b)in doing so, the person intends to stir up hatred against a group of persons based on the group being defined by reference to a characteristic mentioned in subsection (3). (3)The characteristics are— (a)age, (b)disability, (c)religion or, in the case of a social or cultural group, perceived religious affiliation, (d)sexual orientation, (e)transgender identity, (f)variations in sex characteristics. (4)It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to show that the behaviour or the communication of the material was, in the particular circumstances, reasonable. (5)For the purposes of subsection (4), in determining whether behaviour or communication was reasonable, particular regard must be had to the importance of the right to freedom of expression by virtue of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, including the general principle that the right applies to the expression of information or ideas that offend, shock or disturb. (6)For the purposes of subsection (4), it is shown that the behaviour or the communication of the material was, in the particular circumstances, reasonable if— (a)evidence adduced is enough to raise an issue as to whether that is the case, and (b)the prosecution does not prove beyond reasonable doubt that it is not the case.
It is still perfectly legal to offend, shock and disturb, what's not allowed is to promote violence against a group of people. I'm amazed that anyone wants to defend such behaviour.
No. The act goes further than only making unlawful the promotion of violence. If it only made offences of advocating or threatening violence there would be nothing much to discuss.
That in turn has prompted calls this morning from two senior national Labour people promising help. So much in politics is about snowball effects.
Sounds like the old pals act to me.
What does Nick mean by this ? ...Communities will benefit from having a Labour MP who can represent the area’s concerns as a member of the new majority – not by the sort of discrimination in government funding that has been a particular disgraceful hallmark of the Tory years, but simply in terms of understanding local needs...
That's either disingenuous, or nonsense.
Not sure why you think that? My point is that if Labour wins a majority mainly consisting of seats in the cities and their suburbs, there will be a shortage of people who have direct experience of the issues that worry people in small towns and villages (my constituency is one such, but there are many others which aren't really rural but are certainly not cities either). We obviously aren't going to win every seat but we do need to have a sufficient variety to give a range of input into spending decisions.
I get what you are saying.
Indeed it is much the same as how gaining "Red Wall" seats changed the Conservative Party for a while, until the fall of Johnson and rise of Sunak killed off "Levelling Up".
A Labour government with significant numbers of new MPs from semi-rural constituencies of England is going to be a different parliamentary party to one confined to metropolitan University cities.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Ironically, with my background as a past North London city dweller, I might not like the difference personally, but I do recognise that it'd be healthy.
Labour had a significant rural vote in the past, even winning seats in Norfolk now considered bedrock Tory. Indeed 30% Lab in Harborough in 2017 realised my eyebrows, showing that it doesn't have to be Tory lite agenda to get votes out.
I wonder if they will quite a few rural areas. The LD underperformance there that means Labour are second in many will help push them as favourites.
Worth mentioning the Country Land & Business Association commissioned Survation to poll the 100 most rural constituencies in England and Wales at the end of January. The results showed a 40 point Conservative lead from December 2019 being replaced with a 3 point Labour lead at a swing of 21%. That's a swing but given what would be huge Conservative majorities I'm not sure what that would mean in terms of seat changes.
On those numbers Harborough Oadby & Wigston's 15,000 Conservative majority would become a 5,000 Labour majority if turnout was repeated. That's the 173rd safest Conservative seat based on notional numbers.
51 Labour to 43 Tory. I assume rest are LD and PC. Not sure about changes, but I'd imagine they'd be hefty.
The seats are all in England and the Conservatives won 96 of the 100 under the old boundaries in December 2019. I don't know the impact of boundary changes. Sherwood Forest for example has a notional Conservative majority of 16.000. That would become a Labour majority of 5,000 on the CLBA numbers. It is, based on the notional figures, the 160th safest Conservative seat.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
Some little time ago, there was an article in the Guardian (I think) decrying a government scheme to provide VC type support to startups. The scheme isn't actually VC for startups. But the article went on about the fact that only 30% (or similar) of the companies hadn't failed in a couple of years.
Entirely missing the fact that if Sunak had created a scheme for getting 30% success rate in VC, then he is a genius and will be making more money than Elon Musk.
The problem is the expectation of 100% success and using any means to get it. Which guarantees, due to the paradoxes of life, 100% failure.
In discussing DARPA like schemes with politicians, they *hate* the idea of investing seed money in 1,000s of ideas. They want the to pick the "right" ideas. That align with "policy objectives". And then invest large sums to "make sure it works".
So they want the DARPA like success - with 100% opposite method to DARPA.
To anyone in Scotland with religious beliefs - it's a load of nonsense you daft bunch.
Are the irreligious protected?
"All the people in Scotland who believe the universe accidentally made itself out of nothing are in egregious error and are bampots."
I shall await the call from Police Scotland.
AFAICS "or belief" is excluded, as is "or philosophy", which should cause the Scottish Humanist Society to have kitttens, but afaics they have swallowed the transgenderist kool-aid, so that may take priority.
This is an absolutely dreadful law but what's most depressing is that even when the SNP is turfed out of Holyrood, Labour is committed to keeping this nonsense going.
Indeed, you watch the campaign to bring this law to Westminster the day Labour win the election...
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
Invest in business and if you fail you lose your money.
Invest in business and if you succeed then people will demand that everything you gain is taken through taxation.
From today a couple both working a 40 hour week on minimum wage will together earn 40x52x11.44x2=47,590.
For a single earner the higher rate tax band starts at £50,271 - just £2681 more.
Nuts.
Fiscal drag will convert average earners into higher rate taxpayers if the thresholds are frozen for long enough. It's most likely the plan, to keep up with the colossal healthcare and pensions bill for the retired.
With salary sacrifice and reducing hours being used to reduce tax payments.
Punitive taxation of earned incomes is certainly a disincentive to work - and the people being dragged into the higher rate band now aren't exactly minted executives. Some police sergeants, for example, are now higher rate taxpayers. Even I'm not that far off becoming a higher rate taxpayer, and I'm a skilled but fairly unremarkable functionary with no management role.
I'm sure there'll be a lot of comfortably off people aged 50-plus, especially if they've cleared the mortgage or aren't far off doing so, who'll be looking at returning most of every pound they earn above the threshold in tax and thinking they'd rather cut their hours and have the time off instead. Indeed, I dare say many have already done just that.
If Government continues to pile the tax burden on earnings whilst letting assets off lightly, then it has no right to complain about the problems of overpriced housing, robber landlords or underemployment. People will do what makes the most financial sense for them, which is piling into property and prioritising leisure over badly rewarded work.
I had thought that targeting Didcot and Wantage wasn't too presumptuous. After all, it's the 22nd closest Tory target in the country for the Lib Dems. It's been moving Lib Dem-wards for years. Local Government in the constituency is overwhelmingly Lib Dem (Labour didn't even bother standing candidates for most wards in the local elections last year - they only stood in three of the sixteen wards in the constituency and won councillors in one of those). We've been working it as a key target for years.
But it appears that this is off and we should stop working it in order that Labour can get traction in their 208th target (which was previously highlighted as "Not a Battleground Seat"), where they haven't worked for years previously, have minimal Local Government presence (zero at County Council; three at District Council in a single ward, out of 27 Councillors available in 16 wards).
In all seriousness - do Labour supporters genuinely expect us to shrug and down tools here? Really? "Oh well, forget all the hard work to date over all these years. Never mind that it's one of our top targets. Labour have just decided that they might want it"
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
Alternatively, Yankland is being torn in two by mutually antagonistic tribes, who loathe each other so much that they'd happily vote for a reincarnated Pol Pot if they thought he was their best chance of defeating the other lot. It's the logical endpoint of the Culture Wars bullshit. We must make sure we don't go there.
Another example if both-sidesism that's not well evidenced.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
Some little time ago, there was an article in the Guardian (I think) decrying a government scheme to provide VC type support to startups. The scheme isn't actually VC for startups. But the article went on about the fact that only 30% (or similar) of the companies hadn't failed in a couple of years.
Entirely missing the fact that if Sunak had created a scheme for getting 30% success rate in VC, then he is a genius and will be making more money than Elon Musk.
The problem is the expectation of 100% success and using any means to get it. Which guarantees, due to the paradoxes of life, 100% failure.
In discussing DARPA like schemes with politicians, they *hate* the idea of investing seed money in 1,000s of ideas. They want the to pick the "right" ideas. That align with "policy objectives". And then invest large sums to "make sure it works".
So they want the DARPA like success - with 100% opposite method to DARPA.
I think essentially you are correct, but the loss rate is reduced if applications are rigorously processed.
Government seems taken in by scammers more often than a granny on a suckers list.
This act is criticised often by the same people as being anti free speech, but not including women in the list of protected characteristics, of being so vague that anyone could be caught up in it and too prescriptive in the protections it provides.
It also incorporates a large amount of existing legislation on hate crimes.
Which is not to say the critics are necessarily wrong or that this is a good bit of legislation. But I do think it's a bit more nuanced than many in this board are making it out to be.
The two questions I am interested in are:
Does this act provide protections that weren't available before? No-one seems to be discussing this, but I would think it crucial to whether this act is worth having.
The chilling effect that seems to be the substantive criticism. Is this a direct effect of the law or due to a misconception of the law? A problem if it's the first, but not if it's the second, in my view.
A misconception, I'd say, but it can still be a problem imo unless it's rectified. This law perhaps can perhaps be best judged when it's in and bedded down. Will it lead to lots of police time being wasted and/or a serious diminution in people's freedom to express controversial opinions? Or will the main impact be that nasty bigoted people who want to say nasty bigoted things to stoke hatred against groups they are prejudiced against, thus making the world that little bit worse for their efforts, are somewhat discouraged from doing so? Or maybe it won't have much effect at all. I don't know and neither do most of those commenting on either side - or just the one side here on PB, where I'm guessing there's close to blanket agreement with cyclefree's header.
Certainly ‘those culture warriors whose nightmarish vision is that the new law poses the greatest threat to free speech since the abolition of the Licensing Act’ are well represented.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
Some little time ago, there was an article in the Guardian (I think) decrying a government scheme to provide VC type support to startups. The scheme isn't actually VC for startups. But the article went on about the fact that only 30% (or similar) of the companies hadn't failed in a couple of years.
Entirely missing the fact that if Sunak had created a scheme for getting 30% success rate in VC, then he is a genius and will be making more money than Elon Musk.
The problem is the expectation of 100% success and using any means to get it. Which guarantees, due to the paradoxes of life, 100% failure.
In discussing DARPA like schemes with politicians, they *hate* the idea of investing seed money in 1,000s of ideas. They want the to pick the "right" ideas. That align with "policy objectives". And then invest large sums to "make sure it works".
So they want the DARPA like success - with 100% opposite method to DARPA.
DARPA is rather different from venture capital, though. It's about small scale funding targeted at solving particular problems, with a high risk/ fail early mindset.
And one of the most important aspects is having very smart program directors with 100% autonomy - and very limited tenure.
No one gets to second guess them, especially politicians. But they don't stay long enough to accumulate institutional power, which prevents the system becoming sclerotic.
That in turn has prompted calls this morning from two senior national Labour people promising help. So much in politics is about snowball effects.
If the Labour government continues to offer crap policies like Blair did under Iraq, ID cards, HIPs etc. than it is only sensible for the Liberal Democrats to oppose it.
ID cards would be quite handy these days. And HIPs was only a bad idea because the Conservative Press opposed it on political grounds and Yvette panicked.
Iraq, fair point.
Never mind HIPs. What I would like to see is advertisements selling houses/flats be compelled to show the "square footage" like ads for offices do.
Sfaict all listings on Rightmove, Zoopla and other sites already list square footage, as do a couple of estate agents I've checked. It looks like the market has already caught up with you. Now we can move on to the real debate: square feet vs square metres.
EPCs have included square footage since they started, I think, and they have always been compulsory when a dwelling is put on sale.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
Invest in business and if you fail you lose your money.
Invest in business and if you succeed then people will demand that everything you gain is taken through taxation.
That's utter bollox.
Firstly with limited liability one tends to lose other people's money.
Profit and capital gains are taxed, one would hope fairly. That's how the world goes around. There are normally tax incentives for reinvestment.
I had thought that targeting Didcot and Wantage wasn't too presumptuous. After all, it's the 22nd closest Tory target in the country for the Lib Dems. It's been moving Lib Dem-wards for years. Local Government in the constituency is overwhelmingly Lib Dem (Labour didn't even bother standing candidates for most wards in the local elections last year - they only stood in three of the sixteen wards in the constituency and won councillors in one of those). We've been working it as a key target for years.
But it appears that this is off and we should stop working it in order that Labour can get traction in their 208th target (which was previously highlighted as "Not a Battleground Seat"), where they haven't worked for years previously, have minimal Local Government presence (zero at County Council; three at District Council in a single ward, out of 27 Councillors available in 16 wards).
In all seriousness - do Labour supporters genuinely expect us to shrug and down tools here? Really? "Oh well, forget all the hard work to date over all these years. Never mind that it's one of our top targets. Labour have just decided that they might want it"
It's important that Labour gets to know about the bits of the country it doesn't know well. The only way to do that is to let them win every seat. Apparently.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
Being in England I think I can safely say (a) what an excellent thread from JK Rowling and also (b) bits of Harry Potter vols 5,6, and 7 are a bit dull.
Being in England I think I can safely say (a) what an excellent thread from JK Rowling and also (b) bits of Harry Potter vols 5,6, and 7 are a bit dull.
I'm in England too and I wouldn't be too smug. I can see the campaign to bring this law (or something very close to it) starting the day Labour wins the election.
I can see a huge bust up between the Labour government and HOL in the next Parliament over this.
Does anyone have experience of complaining to the Monitoring Officer for a Council?
I have a Councillor who is openly defending / promoting a policy to spend Council Taxpayers' money putting anti-wheelchair barriers on a Council provided footpath which will keep disabled people out of a local Woodland Trust reserve.
Such barriers - and hence the expenditure - are unlawful under the Equality Act, specifically and under the Public Sector Equality Duty, and the Councillor does not seem to want to listen. The position seems to be "so stop me then", in the belief that opposition can just be ignored, as is often the case. AFAIK Councillors cannot instruct officers to carry out unlawful acts.
Any links to *any* Monitoring Officer case studies would be helpful.
MRP-wise, the difference between firms makes normal polling differences seem tiny in comparison.
I suppose the model and method used makes a huge difference, which makes them a bit fraught to use (notwithstanding the question of whether they pick up anything useful at a distance from the election, as raised the other day).
The difference between the YouGov MRP about twelve weeks back and the Best from Britain one a few days back is huge.
My first instinct was "Well, maybe the polls have shifted a lot in that time." I'd thought they'd been fairly static, but maybe I was wrong?
Nope. Almost exactly the same
(When you look at the averages, they're within a point of each other for each party)
(Also as an aside, the inferred score in the YouGov MRP does differ from the scores their regular polls were getting. I assume this is caused by the MRP processing)
Didcot and Wantage, under YouGov: Con 31, LD 32, Lab 24. Under the Survation/BfB: Con 33, LD 17, Lab 38.
The Con one is within normal MoE, but for both LDs and Labour, the difference is so huge that it can't be variance like that. It has to be inherent in the different models.
Overall seat scores, YouGov gave Con 169, Lab 385, LD 48, SNP 22 whilst (with very similar average polling scores at the time of sampling) the Survation gave Con 98, Lab 468, LD 22, SNP 41. Again, that has to be down to different models.
Obviously I feel the YouGov is more plausible (for a lot of the reasons given before), but also because their other seats didn't look that strange. (I used Carshalton and Wallington for an independent "sniff test" as I have a friend who lives there - last time around C&W was Con 42, LD 41, Lab 12 and has overwhelming LD local Government presence and minimal Labour presence; YouGov projected Con 27, LD 47, Lab 17 there whilst Survation project a photo finish behind LD and Lab with Con 23, LD 32, Lab 31. I personally feel that the YouGov figures are much more plausible there as well, but I suppose I would).
If anyone's an expert on MRP, can they shed any light? It does look like the Con figures are usually fairly compatible, but the Lab and LD ones swing immensely, and it doesn't look like we could put that down to changes in national support between the MRPs
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
But that's why we need to disincentivise you from buying a small block of flats which make you ten grand a month every month forever and incentivise you to start a small machine shop which after five years is earning you £100,000 per month after ten years £500,000 and after 20 years is earning you £1,000,000 a month.
You are making more than your wildest dreams and doing your civic duty by paying your fairly proportioned tax burden.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
A 100% owned rental property is a guaranteed cash machine. As is, quite certainly, 2 at 50% owned.
It’s a version of the Dutch Disease, aka The Resource Curse.
In countries that have a resource (oil say) that provides guaranteed minimum levels of return, investment gravitates to that, and the rest of the economy is strangled by it.
See many oil producing countries and their battles to not have an economy that is 90%+ oil dominated.
The Norwegian Oil fund was setup (and structure), in large part to prevent this happening.
In the U.K. property investment has a similar function and result.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
Yes, you're also quite a Trump Bear, aren't you. A small and noble band which I hope in time will be proven astute. He will (I'm sure) try and strike a moderate tone on abortion but the Dems should be able to make it a wedge issue and profit from that. The hawkish position so popular with most of the GOP is out of step with majority public opinion and this is an issue which fires people up on both sides. In fact I have high hopes of women generally being a fatal barrier to Trump getting enough votes to win. Of all his countless negative traits his clear bone-deep misogyny is right up there.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
MRP-wise, the difference between firms makes normal polling differences seem tiny in comparison.
I suppose the model and method used makes a huge difference, which makes them a bit fraught to use (notwithstanding the question of whether they pick up anything useful at a distance from the election, as raised the other day).
The difference between the YouGov MRP about twelve weeks back and the Best from Britain one a few days back is huge.
My first instinct was "Well, maybe the polls have shifted a lot in that time." I'd thought they'd been fairly static, but maybe I was wrong?
Nope. Almost exactly the same
(When you look at the averages, they're within a point of each other for each party)
(Also as an aside, the inferred score in the YouGov MRP does differ from the scores their regular polls were getting. I assume this is caused by the MRP processing)
Didcot and Wantage, under YouGov: Con 31, LD 32, Lab 24. Under the Survation/BfB: Con 33, LD 17, Lab 38.
The Con one is within normal MoE, but for both LDs and Labour, the difference is so huge that it can't be variance like that. It has to be inherent in the different models.
Overall seat scores, YouGov gave Con 169, Lab 385, LD 48, SNP 22 whilst (with very similar average polling scores at the time of sampling) the Survation gave Con 98, Lab 468, LD 22, SNP 41. Again, that has to be down to different models.
Obviously I feel the YouGov is more plausible (for a lot of the reasons given before), but also because their other seats didn't look that strange. (I used Carshalton and Wallington for an independent "sniff test" as I have a friend who lives there - last time around C&W was Con 42, LD 41, Lab 12 and has overwhelming LD local Government presence and minimal Labour presence; YouGov projected Con 27, LD 47, Lab 17 there whilst Survation project a photo finish behind LD and Lab with Con 23, LD 32, Lab 31. I personally feel that the YouGov figures are much more plausible there as well, but I suppose I would).
If anyone's an expert on MRP, can they shed any light? It does look like the Con figures are usually fairly compatible, but the Lab and LD ones swing immensely, and it doesn't look like we could put that down to changes in national support between the MRPs
Interesting post. Not sure what accounts for the differences but I remember a thread header on here years ago (maybe from Peter Kelner?) saying MRP is only really useful about a week before a general election?
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
MRP-wise, the difference between firms makes normal polling differences seem tiny in comparison.
I suppose the model and method used makes a huge difference, which makes them a bit fraught to use (notwithstanding the question of whether they pick up anything useful at a distance from the election, as raised the other day).
The difference between the YouGov MRP about twelve weeks back and the Best from Britain one a few days back is huge.
My first instinct was "Well, maybe the polls have shifted a lot in that time." I'd thought they'd been fairly static, but maybe I was wrong?
Nope. Almost exactly the same
(When you look at the averages, they're within a point of each other for each party)
(Also as an aside, the inferred score in the YouGov MRP does differ from the scores their regular polls were getting. I assume this is caused by the MRP processing)
Didcot and Wantage, under YouGov: Con 31, LD 32, Lab 24. Under the Survation/BfB: Con 33, LD 17, Lab 38.
The Con one is within normal MoE, but for both LDs and Labour, the difference is so huge that it can't be variance like that. It has to be inherent in the different models.
Overall seat scores, YouGov gave Con 169, Lab 385, LD 48, SNP 22 whilst (with very similar average polling scores at the time of sampling) the Survation gave Con 98, Lab 468, LD 22, SNP 41. Again, that has to be down to different models.
Obviously I feel the YouGov is more plausible (for a lot of the reasons given before), but also because their other seats didn't look that strange. (I used Carshalton and Wallington for an independent "sniff test" as I have a friend who lives there - last time around C&W was Con 42, LD 41, Lab 12 and has overwhelming LD local Government presence and minimal Labour presence; YouGov projected Con 27, LD 47, Lab 17 there whilst Survation project a photo finish behind LD and Lab with Con 23, LD 32, Lab 31. I personally feel that the YouGov figures are much more plausible there as well, but I suppose I would).
If anyone's an expert on MRP, can they shed any light? It does look like the Con figures are usually fairly compatible, but the Lab and LD ones swing immensely, and it doesn't look like we could put that down to changes in national support between the MRPs
Also, from bitter experience, we LDs can warn about getting carried away with polling extrapolations to pour resources into further targets than turn out to be actually on the cards. One reason why we're concentrating on closer ones (like Didcot and Wantage )
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
A 100% owned rental property is a guaranteed cash machine. As is, quite certainly, 2 at 50% owned.
It’s a version of the Dutch Disease, aka The Resource Curse.
In countries that have a resource (oil say) that provides guaranteed minimum levels of return, investment gravitates to that, and the rest of the economy is strangled by it.
See many oil producing countries and their battles to not have an economy that is 90%+ oil dominated.
The Norwegian Oil fund was setup (and structure), in large part to prevent this happening.
In the U.K. property investment has a similar function and result.
Yes you should only be able to make serious money from property if you're adding tangible value - eg building it or improving it. If just trading it or renting it out is bringing better returns (for the risk) than most businesses there's something wrong.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
The Scottish government may well end up jailing JK Rowling in the next year or two?
After an initial flurry of activist (trans and other) initiated complaints to the Police, I expect the main recipients of charges will be thick young men who think they are “hard”. This is provided the Police and courts aren’t unduly influenced by virtue signalling politicians.
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
Trump's abortion views are actually pretty mainstream - he wants a ban at four months.
Its everything else about him which is dangerous.
And its very dangerous to try to extrapolate from a local byelection to a Presidential election.
More a straw in the wind than extrapolating, perhaps.
If it's affecting Republican seats in Alabama ...
Alabama is where the problematic IVF ruling was.
It also a state seat which has been trending Dem and where the election was caused by a resignation for electoral fraud.
Abortion is an issue but its more of a 2.5% issue than a 25% one.
I completely agree with you about extrapolating from one seat. But abortion is a salient issue for many, many more than 2.5% of Americans. Every young unmarried woman I know cares about it. So do many married women who don't want any more kids. And then there are plenty of others who are fairly disgusted by 12 year old girls being forced to have their rapist's baby.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
A 100% owned rental property is a guaranteed cash machine. As is, quite certainly, 2 at 50% owned.
It’s a version of the Dutch Disease, aka The Resource Curse.
In countries that have a resource (oil say) that provides guaranteed minimum levels of return, investment gravitates to that, and the rest of the economy is strangled by it.
See many oil producing countries and their battles to not have an economy that is 90%+ oil dominated.
The Norwegian Oil fund was setup (and structure), in large part to prevent this happening.
In the U.K. property investment has a similar function and result.
Yes you should only be able to make serious money from property if you're adding tangible value - eg building it or improving it. If just trading it or renting it out is bringing better returns (for the risk) than most businesses there's something wrong.
Some curious comments in the article below as to the effect of Mr Hunt's changes:
pigeon/Malmesbury - I have been banging on about this but it is so obvious. The problem of property values in highly desirable areas is not a specifically British problem but seems to be worse here than almost anywhere else. You cannot fix the UK economy without putting this front and centre. Will Hutton has written a puff piece for his new book including this line:
'Banks must be incentivised to supply business loans on much less onerous and flexible terms, and the pension system must be boosted and organised to invest in fast-growing companies based on frontier new technologies. A big multibillion private sector wealth fund – already mooted by some in the City – must work in concert with a public sector wealth fund to invest in what will be the great companies of tomorrow, ensuring they stay British-owned to anchor our economy'
All fine but why does he not follow through on WHY people would rather not lend to or invest in fast-growing companies?
Slightly odd question: have any PBers ever been in a situation where you've had two hotel rooms booked for the same night in different hotels, so that you've had a choice of which one to stay in? (Hopefully this would be where someone else made a mistake with the booking rather than yourself).
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
Slightly odd question: have any PBers ever been in a situation where you've had two hotel rooms booked for the same night in different hotels, so that you've had a choice of which one to stay in? (Hopefully this would be where someone else made a mistake with the booking rather than yourself).
Yes. Generally they won't give a refund if you cancel last minute. So delay one by four weeks. Then delay again a week later. Then cancel and you will get a refund.
The Scottish government may well end up jailing JK Rowling in the next year or two?
After an initial flurry of activist (trans and other) initiated complaints to the Police, I expect the main recipients of charges will be thick young men who think they are “hard”. This is provided the Police and courts aren’t unduly influenced by virtue signalling politicians.
'Adam Tomkins, a former Tory MSP and convener of Holyrood’s justice committee who was closely involved with the passage of the bill in 2021, said: “Asserting that sex is a biological fact or that it is not changed just by virtue of the gender by which someone chooses to identify is not and never can be a hate crime under this legislation.”
Tomkins and others have warned that social media postings and some reporting on the act has wrongly suggested that it is criminalising comments that are merely offensive to others.'
The Scottish government may well end up jailing JK Rowling in the next year or two?
After an initial flurry of activist (trans and other) initiated complaints to the Police, I expect the main recipients of charges will be thick young men who think they are “hard”. This is provided the Police and courts aren’t unduly influenced by virtue signalling politicians.
If misgendering of a trans person is now a hate crime, does the same apply to cis people? So if I called Keir Starmer a big girl, is that now illegal in Scotland?
Can somebody explain the issues with HIPs, as objectively as possible?
The HIP (house information pack?) was a standardised set of information meant to be in place before a property was advertised. The intent was to prevent a seller disguising a problem with the property. They became unpopular because I) the buyer still had to do due diligence, so the saving was less than anticipated and ii) it became a Christmas Tree problem, as interested parties started to hang their pet ideas upon it, such as green ratings. It collapsed under the weight of its unpopularity and cost. Just like ID cards, a potentially good and simple idea was killed by the bad and complex add-ons that it inevitably accrued and the cost of administering it.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
A 100% owned rental property is a guaranteed cash machine. As is, quite certainly, 2 at 50% owned.
It’s a version of the Dutch Disease, aka The Resource Curse.
In countries that have a resource (oil say) that provides guaranteed minimum levels of return, investment gravitates to that, and the rest of the economy is strangled by it.
See many oil producing countries and their battles to not have an economy that is 90%+ oil dominated.
The Norwegian Oil fund was setup (and structure), in large part to prevent this happening.
In the U.K. property investment has a similar function and result.
Yes you should only be able to make serious money from property if you're adding tangible value - eg building it or improving it. If just trading it or renting it out is bringing better returns (for the risk) than most businesses there's something wrong.
Owning property which brings in a steady income is what the 'polite' people in Jane Austen do.
Investing in 'trade' or business is for the 'exploiters' from Josiah Bounderby to Bradly Hardacre.
MRP-wise, the difference between firms makes normal polling differences seem tiny in comparison.
I suppose the model and method used makes a huge difference, which makes them a bit fraught to use (notwithstanding the question of whether they pick up anything useful at a distance from the election, as raised the other day).
The difference between the YouGov MRP about twelve weeks back and the Best from Britain one a few days back is huge.
My first instinct was "Well, maybe the polls have shifted a lot in that time." I'd thought they'd been fairly static, but maybe I was wrong?
Nope. Almost exactly the same
(When you look at the averages, they're within a point of each other for each party)
(Also as an aside, the inferred score in the YouGov MRP does differ from the scores their regular polls were getting. I assume this is caused by the MRP processing)
Didcot and Wantage, under YouGov: Con 31, LD 32, Lab 24. Under the Survation/BfB: Con 33, LD 17, Lab 38.
The Con one is within normal MoE, but for both LDs and Labour, the difference is so huge that it can't be variance like that. It has to be inherent in the different models.
Overall seat scores, YouGov gave Con 169, Lab 385, LD 48, SNP 22 whilst (with very similar average polling scores at the time of sampling) the Survation gave Con 98, Lab 468, LD 22, SNP 41. Again, that has to be down to different models.
Obviously I feel the YouGov is more plausible (for a lot of the reasons given before), but also because their other seats didn't look thant strange. (I used Carshalton and Wallington for an independent "sniff test" as I have a friend who lives there - last time around C&W was Con 42, LD 41, Lab 12 and has overwhelming LD local Government presence and minimal Labour presence; YouGov projected Con 27, LD 47, Lab 17 there whilst Survation project a photo finish behind LD and Lab with Con 23, LD 32, Lab 31. I personally feel that the YouGov figures are much more plausible there as well, but I suppose I would).
If anyone's an expert on MRP, can they shed any light? It does look like the Con figures are usually fairly compatible, but the Lab and LD ones swing immensely, and it doesn't look like we could put that down to changes in national support between the MRPs
As I understand it, MRPs should be more accurate at predicting vote share than universal swing or other simple models because they account for more differentiating factors (e.g. average income).
But different MRPs can use different variables that could make certain constituencies behave very differently.
I think the use at general elections is still too nascent to be able to judge who has the more representative model.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
But that's why we need to disincentivise you from buying a small block of flats which make you ten grand a month every month forever and incentivise you to start a small machine shop which after five years is earning you £100,000 per month after ten years £500,000 and after 20 years is earning you £1,000,000 a month.
You are making more than your wildest dreams and doing your civic duty by paying your fairly proportioned tax burden.
You'll get no argument from me on that count. But nobody is going to disincentivise property speculation, are they? Parliament is full of landlords who benefit directly from the practice, and the electorate is full of existing owners who want property taxation kept as low as possible, and prices to keep going up and up and up.
There are simply too many vested interests with too much power to permit restructuring of the economy in the manner that you describe. Your little machine shop, and the people who work in it, will be taxed to death so that landlords can enjoy their profits and pensioners in million pounds houses can be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed, and transmit the remaining value of their estates tax free to the heirs once they shuffle off. Productive economic activity simply isn't a priority in the UK.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
A 100% owned rental property is a guaranteed cash machine. As is, quite certainly, 2 at 50% owned.
It’s a version of the Dutch Disease, aka The Resource Curse.
In countries that have a resource (oil say) that provides guaranteed minimum levels of return, investment gravitates to that, and the rest of the economy is strangled by it.
See many oil producing countries and their battles to not have an economy that is 90%+ oil dominated.
The Norwegian Oil fund was setup (and structure), in large part to prevent this happening.
In the U.K. property investment has a similar function and result.
Yes you should only be able to make serious money from property if you're adding tangible value - eg building it or improving it. If just trading it or renting it out is bringing better returns (for the risk) than most businesses there's something wrong.
Owning property which brings in a steady income is what the 'polite' people in Jane Austen do.
Investing in 'trade' or business is for the 'exploiters' from Josiah Bounderby to Bradly Hardacre.
Slightly odd question: have any PBers ever been in a situation where you've had two hotel rooms booked for the same night in different hotels, so that you've had a choice of which one to stay in? (Hopefully this would be where someone else made a mistake with the booking rather than yourself).
No. But if it were three rooms, does the Monty Hall paradox apply to the choice?
Can somebody explain the issues with HIPs, as objectively as possible?
The HIP (house information pack?) was a standardised set of information meant to be in place before a property was advertised. The intent was to prevent a seller disguising a problem with the property. They became unpopular because I) the buyer still had to do due diligence, so the saving was less than anticipated and ii) it became a Christmas Tree problem, as interested parties started to hang their pet ideas upon it, such as green ratings. It collapsed under the weight of its unpopularity and cost. Just like ID cards, a potentially good and simple idea was killed by the bad and complex add-ons that it inevitably accrued and the cost of administering it.
That is a fair analysis. It was also implemented (poorly) at the tail end of an unpopular government.
Being in England I think I can safely say (a) what an excellent thread from JK Rowling and also (b) bits of Harry Potter vols 5,6, and 7 are a bit dull.
I'm in England too and I wouldn't be too smug. I can see the campaign to bring this law (or something very close to it) starting the day Labour wins the election.
I can see a huge bust up between the Labour government and HOL in the next Parliament over this.
Labour won't as it's quite obviously bad law (even those who sympathise with its aims worry about it) and have the benefit of watching it coming unstuck.
That and the fact they will have a huge amount on and are obviously not going to do something that badly divides their MPs and voters.
Labour is quite institutionally conservative on this stuff in that it doesn't like rocking the boat. A few years ago that meant supporting this kind of thing in the hope it would lead to a quiet life from activists. Now, thanks to the internal pushback it's a row the party would rather not have.
Another point too is that the Labour left might not be as keen on it as they might have once been given its potential to criminalise a lot of the behaviour that Jewish groups describe as antisemitic but that the far left fiercely contest.
The Scottish government may well end up jailing JK Rowling in the next year or two?
After an initial flurry of activist (trans and other) initiated complaints to the Police, I expect the main recipients of charges will be thick young men who think they are “hard”. This is provided the Police and courts aren’t unduly influenced by virtue signalling politicians.
If misgendering of a trans person is now a hate crime, does the same apply to cis people? So if I called Keir Starmer a big girl, is that now illegal in Scotland?
Misgendering of trans persons is not a crime under the new act in Scotland. There is enough wrong with this law (see Cyclefree) without inventing new crimes.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
A 100% owned rental property is a guaranteed cash machine. As is, quite certainly, 2 at 50% owned.
It’s a version of the Dutch Disease, aka The Resource Curse.
In countries that have a resource (oil say) that provides guaranteed minimum levels of return, investment gravitates to that, and the rest of the economy is strangled by it.
See many oil producing countries and their battles to not have an economy that is 90%+ oil dominated.
The Norwegian Oil fund was setup (and structure), in large part to prevent this happening.
In the U.K. property investment has a similar function and result.
Yes you should only be able to make serious money from property if you're adding tangible value - eg building it or improving it. If just trading it or renting it out is bringing better returns (for the risk) than most businesses there's something wrong.
Owning property which brings in a steady income is what the 'polite' people in Jane Austen do.
Investing in 'trade' or business is for the 'exploiters' from Josiah Bounderby to Bradly Hardacre.
Jane Austen subverts this, as so many things; consider the wisdom of the merchant class Gardiners in P and P, as contrasted with the property and bonds class.
How to do the morally wrong thing, and damage your arms industry in the process:
"Production of Taurus missiles has been halted in Germany due to a lack of orders, - DW.
"The defense industry is not allowed to produce goods without orders, and there are none," said Thomas Gottschild, a head of the German subsidiary of the MBDA consortium.
He emphasized that restarting production would require suppliers to retool and secure necessary materials."
"HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, INCLUDING CROOKED AND CORRUPT PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES THAT ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO INTERFERE WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024, AND PUT ME IN PRISON, INCLUDING THOSE MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, A NOW FAILING NATION..."
I know. Utterly bewildering and so so depressing. Donald Trump is a truly and openly despicable individual with not a single redeeming feature. It simply has to break away from him as this election year progresses. I have to believe that and it's not my Big Short talking. If not, I might as well just give up, stop trying to understand things, and devote myself to stroking cats and reading light fiction. In fact ...
I'm a pessimist and think he will win. What could he do to repulse people he has not already done? And are there enough people disappointed by Biden to sink him?
Well there's a few months yet for him to come out with increasingly nasty and bizarre shit. Also as the election nears, the choice (and the prospect of him becoming president again) becomes real. All trace of the hypothetical about it disappears. Those many many millions of Americans who are not Trump cultists and aren't irredeemably partisan saying to themselves, "Ok, so Trump again. Really? Should I actually put my cross there?" Will enough of them end up doing it? I think not. There's lots of 'hope' in there, yes, but I do genuinely assess his chances as far slimmer than the current odds imply. He certainly shouldn't be the favourite imo.
I don't think Trump will win. His abortion views will do for him, as well as his consistent lies about everything, and all the rest.
Trump's abortion views are actually pretty mainstream - he wants a ban at four months.
Its everything else about him which is dangerous.
And its very dangerous to try to extrapolate from a local byelection to a Presidential election.
The problem for Trump is sections of the party want a full abortion ban and the Dems can still hammer the message that in power the GOP will try and put a ban in .
He also can’t run away from the Dobbs decision as he put those SC judges into the court .
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
A 100% owned rental property is a guaranteed cash machine. As is, quite certainly, 2 at 50% owned.
It’s a version of the Dutch Disease, aka The Resource Curse.
In countries that have a resource (oil say) that provides guaranteed minimum levels of return, investment gravitates to that, and the rest of the economy is strangled by it.
See many oil producing countries and their battles to not have an economy that is 90%+ oil dominated.
The Norwegian Oil fund was setup (and structure), in large part to prevent this happening.
In the U.K. property investment has a similar function and result.
Yes you should only be able to make serious money from property if you're adding tangible value - eg building it or improving it. If just trading it or renting it out is bringing better returns (for the risk) than most businesses there's something wrong.
Owning property which brings in a steady income is what the 'polite' people in Jane Austen do.
Investing in 'trade' or business is for the 'exploiters' from Josiah Bounderby to Bradly Hardacre.
Proof if it were needed, of the century in which class-fuelled Tory thinking still inhabits.
Slightly odd question: have any PBers ever been in a situation where you've had two hotel rooms booked for the same night in different hotels, so that you've had a choice of which one to stay in? (Hopefully this would be where someone else made a mistake with the booking rather than yourself).
No. But if it were three rooms, does the Monty Hall paradox apply to the choice?
Reading this disc ussion, one would have no idea at all that the Bill was finally passed by 82 to 32 with four abstentions to pass the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, under a minority SNP administration, or that Labour and the LDs as well as SGs were strong supporters.
On Conhome a post saying Rishi will step down after the locals to be replaced by Mogg. April fool....but with the Tories you never quite know....
Nah. JRM is a fool every month of the year.
(Yes, I know he's made squillions. But as he would no doubt put it, for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And a fool can still be successful and a successful fool is still a fool.)
Yet he’s right about Shamima Begums citizenship and right about letting Thames Water fall and the shareholders take the hit.
So he's right as often as the average stopped clock?
Sorry, I’m forgetting the PB rule. All Tories are wrong uns and labour can do no wrong 👍
As balanced as Bart’s view on the Israel Gaza conflict.
Oh, please. I see there's plenty of room in the ditch for you and Rishi.
JRM is right on Thames Water, no argument, but then a broken clock is correct twice a day. The truth is the privatisation regime put in place by the Conservatives has brought us to this point and I don't hear JRM criticising that.
A country that continually lives beyond its means inevitably sees more and more of its assets bought by foreigners in exchange for current goods and services.
Those assets sold to foreigners can include businesses as well as government bonds, Mayfair mansions and football clubs.
I don't disagree and in a free market that's one of the consequences. I recall the Thatcher Government was enthusiastic about the trading aspects of the Single European Act and indeed free marketers should support the four freedoms.
The problem is economic liberalism bumps up against cultual protectionism - many would prefer to buy British from British owned companies though we all know if the quality comes from abroad, we'll buy the import every time.
That isn't the end of cultural protectionism - the free market in goods and services is one thing but the free market in people is something else. People have always moved to where the money is and it was an inevitable consequence of freedom of movement people from poorer parts of Europe would move to the richer parts. There's economic sense in that just as there is for richer people in the north of Europe to move to the sunnier climes of the south bringing their capital to invigorate the local economies.
As to "living beyond its means", again, I don't disagree but where do you start in terms of reducing the deficit and returning to a balanced budget? Some on the Conservative side actively supported borrowing at low interest rates (thougn that's kicking an ever bigger can down the road) but how do you bring the public finances back?
Do we cut spending, raise taxes or both? What do we cut - apparently health, welfare and defence are off limits (not sure why) and we can't raise taxes without howls of anguish? Is it time for Land Value Taxation or do we continue to tax consumption?
The rich and consumers will have to pay more tax. The poor and old will have to receive less. The workers will have to work longer and increase their productivity.
The proportions of pain between the various groups will be where the debate is but there will be many unhappy whatever the outcome.
As to Thatcher and the development of the single market that was a time when the UK ran a trade surplus, had net emigration and the single market was a much smaller group of countries with fewer economic differences between them.
How she would have viewed the larger, more varied and more chaotic current global economy I don't know.
There are other approaches you’ve not considered. We could grow the economy. For example, let’s try to remove frictions in trade. More free trade will be a boost.
Large multinationals have developed many ways of avoiding tax. Let’s target those, which will probably require multinational collaboration.
More free trade can also mean that production in this country is replaced by cheaper imports from countries which have lower worker earnings and fewer environmental regulations.
Taxing multinational business more comes under 'the rich and consumers will have to pay more tax' heading.
One of the mysteries of recent decades was the way British governments always supported Ireland's low corporation tax rates - possibly a wish to emulate it.
Anyway the rate of corporation tax has now been increased to 25% - a correct decision IMO.
Well your first paragraph sums up the last forty years of UK trade policy.
It's hard to see where genuine growth comes from when we have, and are still, closing primary and tertiary industries.
The promotion of new environmental technology programmes which use domestically procured resources are perhaps a way forward. Labour proposed a £28b programme, the Conservatives "sniggled" at it so Labour took their bat and ball home.
So yes tax rises and service cuts are probably the reality.
Investment is no more a magical cure to our problems than saying abracadabra is.
I'm happy to support investment which has a positive rate of return whoever makes that investment.
So, for example, I applaud Biden's industrial investments as I think they're a worthwhile risk.
But I would caution that an investment with a negative rate of return leaves you worse of.
Everyone on a betting website should be aware of that inconvenient fact.
And ensuring investment has a positive rate of return is no easy matter - especially when governments get involved.
So Starmer and Reeves can invest as much as they want but let them be publicly clear about the consequences before they start:
A positive rate of return and more money will be available to spend on other things.
A negative rate of return and the cuts will be deeper than they would have been.
Investment is the only cure.
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
SUCCESSFUL investment might be the cure.
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
But therein lies our problem. As a nation we don't speculate to accumulate we rely on dead certs and favourites. Hence property, and I take you back to Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to demonstrate that investing in property isn't always a dead cert.
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
The thing is, with the constriction of supply and the favourable tax treatment, why would you NOT invest in residential property? There's no point, for the smaller investor at any rate, in rolling the dice on shares if you have enough money to buy housing and rent it out for an extortionate monthly fee.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
But that's why we need to disincentivise you from buying a small block of flats which make you ten grand a month every month forever and incentivise you to start a small machine shop which after five years is earning you £100,000 per month after ten years £500,000 and after 20 years is earning you £1,000,000 a month.
You are making more than your wildest dreams and doing your civic duty by paying your fairly proportioned tax burden.
You'll get no argument from me on that count. But nobody is going to disincentivise property speculation, are they? Parliament is full of landlords who benefit directly from the practice, and the electorate is full of existing owners who want property taxation kept as low as possible, and prices to keep going up and up and up.
There are simply too many vested interests with too much power to permit restructuring of the economy in the manner that you describe. Your little machine shop, and the people who work in it, will be taxed to death so that landlords can enjoy their profits and pensioners in million pounds houses can be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed, and transmit the remaining value of their estates tax free to the heirs once they shuffle off. Productive economic activity simply isn't a priority in the UK.
Its also that starting a machine shop requires skills, a favourable economic environment and some cash. Buying a house needs a baseline of competence and some cash. Much easier to get said cash to buy a house as our lenders like property.
Being in England I think I can safely say (a) what an excellent thread from JK Rowling and also (b) bits of Harry Potter vols 5,6, and 7 are a bit dull.
I'm in England too and I wouldn't be too smug. I can see the campaign to bring this law (or something very close to it) starting the day Labour wins the election.
I can see a huge bust up between the Labour government and HOL in the next Parliament over this.
Labour won't as it's quite obviously bad law (even those who sympathise with its aims worry about it) and have the benefit of watching it coming unstuck.
That and the fact they will have a huge amount on and are obviously not going to do something that badly divides their MPs and voters.
Labour is quite institutionally conservative on this stuff in that it doesn't like rocking the boat. A few years ago that meant supporting this kind of thing in the hope it would lead to a quiet life from activists. Now, thanks to the internal pushback it's a row the party would rather not have.
Another point too is that the Labour left might not be as keen on it as they might have once been given its potential to criminalise a lot of the behaviour that Jewish groups describe as antisemitic but that the far left fiercely contest.
If Labour get into power (I hope they do) it will be on the back of two or three million usually Tory and LD voters, together with less ideological SNP voters who switch. They will want to, and need to, keep them. They will have enough things making them unpopular (like being to blame for the nature of reality) without adding to it.
Reading this disc ussion, one would have no idea at all that the Bill was finally passed by 82 to 32 with four abstentions to pass the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, under a minority SNP administration, or that Labour and the LDs as well as SGs were strong supporters.
How to do the morally wrong thing, and damage your arms industry in the process:
"Production of Taurus missiles has been halted in Germany due to a lack of orders, - DW.
"The defense industry is not allowed to produce goods without orders, and there are none," said Thomas Gottschild, a head of the German subsidiary of the MBDA consortium.
He emphasized that restarting production would require suppliers to retool and secure necessary materials."
Reading this disc ussion, one would have no idea at all that the Bill was finally passed by 82 to 32 with four abstentions to pass the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, under a minority SNP administration, or that Labour and the LDs as well as SGs were strong supporters.
Reading this disc ussion, one would have no idea at all that the Bill was finally passed by 82 to 32 with four abstentions to pass the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, under a minority SNP administration, or that Labour and the LDs as well as SGs were strong supporters.
Recalling the GRR bill It’s déjà vu all over again, the once enthusiastic SLab and LDs maintaining a stoic silence over their support, and the BBC helpfully not asking them about it,
Comments
Stewpot may have gone for a bike ride.
That is entirely normal as part of the drafting process, adding definitions, clarifications, restrictions, limitations,tacking on guidance and regulations.
I've no doubt the Act has done this, there has been talk of safeguards in there, presumably added due to worries about confusion or misconception.
So that's a normal thing to do. The question is if it has been sufficient. The Scottish government say that it is.
Said pile of paper didn’t actually have much validity or use.
A major argument against its scrapping was the premature end of a growing industry in writing the documents!
Now we have lost North Sea oil, cheap Chinese imports and free trade with the EU, we better think of something better than house price inflation to fund the economy.
I don't know the reality of speculating on green energy projects and infrastructure but we need to do something and that sounds worth a try to me, Slashing infrastructure projects like HS2 is shortsighted but represents the malaise of the years of EU membership. France spent it's Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones in Cemaes Bay.
Cutting the state to balance tax cuts is just a nonsense.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24222543.biffa-threatens-sue-scottish-government-deposit-return-scheme/
On those numbers Harborough Oadby & Wigston's 15,000 Conservative majority would become a 5,000 Labour majority if turnout was repeated. That's the 173rd safest Conservative seat based on notional numbers.
There's probably some connection with 'sin' and 'martyrdom' and being 'born again' in the evangelical mind.
Trump has more in common with a grifting televangelist then with any normal politician.
Or even the 'king' in Huck Finn.
As for nonsense projections, drastic change always looks like nonsense till it happens. Would you have predicted Tories winning Ashfield, or Labour winning Canterbury? What MRP picks up is a basic leaning of the demographic to the various parties. Whether it translates into votes depends on whether the parties really go for it. That happens a lot in by-elections (e.g. Mid-Beds) but not usually in GEs. My article is essentially arguing that the current climate makes it right to go for it in seats we don't usually win.
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1774747068944265615?s=61
Now if there's anyone around who can tell be the winner of the 14:35 at Chepstow or which shares to buy I'm interested.
But if such as investment goes wrong then government wont bail me out but it will do plenty if it looks like property prices might fall.
That's one reason people invest in property rather than in business.
Remind me why your last account got banned here ?
When a High Court judge gives his charge at the end of a trial one of his tasks involves explaining to the jury what the requirements of the offence are and what they need to be satisfied of, beyond a reasonable doubt, in respect of the charge. In the case of a DASA charge this involves the jury considering 7 different elements. Some judges have resorted to written directions on this because it is so complicated.
I fear that Judges may have to do something similar for the Hate Crime Act. The nature of the charge and the defences are going to be tricky to explain to 15 lay people. The risk of miscarriages of justice are significant. Criminal law is exceptionally fact specific but a situation where the outcome becomes fairly random is not justice.
The problem with both of these Acts, and indeed many similar provisions in other Acts, is that they seek to address a social harm but they then have to be applied to a wide range of facts which can be quite messy and contradictory. The path to a conviction becomes convoluted as does the risk of facing prosecution inadvertently.
I do think it is fair to say that many of the criticisms of this particular Act might well be made of other, existing, legislation. This does not make this Act a good thing but it is not, sadly, uniquely bad.
This law is very troubling and sets a bad precedent.
With friends like these......
Most of the entrepreneurs in the world have a litany of failures in front and behind them.
I wonder whether history will see cancelling HS2 as a really really bad idea.
In the same way implementing the Beeching Plan was seen after 50 years as folly.
Entirely missing the fact that if Sunak had created a scheme for getting 30% success rate in VC, then he is a genius and will be making more money than Elon Musk.
The problem is the expectation of 100% success and using any means to get it. Which guarantees, due to the paradoxes of life, 100% failure.
In discussing DARPA like schemes with politicians, they *hate* the idea of investing seed money in 1,000s of ideas. They want the to pick the "right" ideas. That align with "policy objectives". And then invest large sums to "make sure it works".
So they want the DARPA like success - with 100% opposite method to DARPA.
This is an absolutely dreadful law but what's most depressing is that even when the SNP is turfed out of Holyrood, Labour is committed to keeping this nonsense going.
Indeed, you watch the campaign to bring this law to Westminster the day Labour win the election...
Invest in business and if you succeed then people will demand that everything you gain is taken through taxation.
I'm sure there'll be a lot of comfortably off people aged 50-plus, especially if they've cleared the mortgage or aren't far off doing so, who'll be looking at returning most of every pound they earn above the threshold in tax and thinking they'd rather cut their hours and have the time off instead. Indeed, I dare say many have already done just that.
If Government continues to pile the tax burden on earnings whilst letting assets off lightly, then it has no right to complain about the problems of overpriced housing, robber landlords or underemployment. People will do what makes the most financial sense for them, which is piling into property and prioritising leisure over badly rewarded work.
I had thought that targeting Didcot and Wantage wasn't too presumptuous. After all, it's the 22nd closest Tory target in the country for the Lib Dems. It's been moving Lib Dem-wards for years. Local Government in the constituency is overwhelmingly Lib Dem (Labour didn't even bother standing candidates for most wards in the local elections last year - they only stood in three of the sixteen wards in the constituency and won councillors in one of those). We've been working it as a key target for years.
But it appears that this is off and we should stop working it in order that Labour can get traction in their 208th target (which was previously highlighted as "Not a Battleground Seat"), where they haven't worked for years previously, have minimal Local Government presence (zero at County Council; three at District Council in a single ward, out of 27 Councillors available in 16 wards).
In all seriousness - do Labour supporters genuinely expect us to shrug and down tools here? Really?
"Oh well, forget all the hard work to date over all these years. Never mind that it's one of our top targets. Labour have just decided that they might want it"
Government seems taken in by scammers more often than a granny on a suckers list.
It's about small scale funding targeted at solving particular problems, with a high risk/ fail early mindset.
And one of the most important aspects is having very smart program directors with 100% autonomy - and very limited tenure.
No one gets to second guess them, especially politicians. But they don't stay long enough to accumulate institutional power, which prevents the system becoming sclerotic.
https://www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/shock-20-pendle-labour-councillors-28919163
So square footage is already there.
Firstly with limited liability one tends to lose other people's money.
Profit and capital gains are taxed, one would hope fairly. That's how the world goes around. There are normally tax incentives for reinvestment.
The only way to do that is to let them win every seat. Apparently.
If I, for argument's sake, won half a million on the lottery then I'd be sorely tempted to buy a flat and rent it out. You turn the tenant into a cash machine, make a handsome yield each year, and receive an almost guaranteed capital gain (and probably a very big one) if and when you have had enough and elect to sell up, because prices aren't going to do anything but keep going up over the medium to long term.
People, by and large, aren't thick. If collecting rents is probably going to get you a better return than investing in productive activity, then you'll collect rents.
Meanwhile, I wonder what the pot holes are like in Pendle? 😂
Only last week a Democrat won a Republican-leaning state seat in Alabama with a 25% majority after a came explicitly about abortion rights.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/lands-democrat-ran-reproductive-rights-flips-seat-alabama-108539149
I can see a huge bust up between the Labour government and HOL in the next Parliament over this.
Does anyone have experience of complaining to the Monitoring Officer for a Council?
I have a Councillor who is openly defending / promoting a policy to spend Council Taxpayers' money putting anti-wheelchair barriers on a Council provided footpath which will keep disabled people out of a local Woodland Trust reserve.
Such barriers - and hence the expenditure - are unlawful under the Equality Act, specifically and under the Public Sector Equality Duty, and the Councillor does not seem to want to listen. The position seems to be "so stop me then", in the belief that opposition can just be ignored, as is often the case. AFAIK Councillors cannot instruct officers to carry out unlawful acts.
Any links to *any* Monitoring Officer case studies would be helpful.
I suppose the model and method used makes a huge difference, which makes them a bit fraught to use (notwithstanding the question of whether they pick up anything useful at a distance from the election, as raised the other day).
The difference between the YouGov MRP about twelve weeks back and the Best from Britain one a few days back is huge.
My first instinct was "Well, maybe the polls have shifted a lot in that time." I'd thought they'd been fairly static, but maybe I was wrong?
Nope. Almost exactly the same
(When you look at the averages, they're within a point of each other for each party)
(Also as an aside, the inferred score in the YouGov MRP does differ from the scores their regular polls were getting. I assume this is caused by the MRP processing)
Didcot and Wantage, under YouGov: Con 31, LD 32, Lab 24.
Under the Survation/BfB: Con 33, LD 17, Lab 38.
The Con one is within normal MoE, but for both LDs and Labour, the difference is so huge that it can't be variance like that. It has to be inherent in the different models.
Overall seat scores, YouGov gave Con 169, Lab 385, LD 48, SNP 22 whilst (with very similar average polling scores at the time of sampling) the Survation gave Con 98, Lab 468, LD 22, SNP 41.
Again, that has to be down to different models.
Obviously I feel the YouGov is more plausible (for a lot of the reasons given before), but also because their other seats didn't look that strange. (I used Carshalton and Wallington for an independent "sniff test" as I have a friend who lives there - last time around C&W was Con 42, LD 41, Lab 12 and has overwhelming LD local Government presence and minimal Labour presence; YouGov projected Con 27, LD 47, Lab 17 there whilst Survation project a photo finish behind LD and Lab with Con 23, LD 32, Lab 31. I personally feel that the YouGov figures are much more plausible there as well, but I suppose I would).
If anyone's an expert on MRP, can they shed any light? It does look like the Con figures are usually fairly compatible, but the Lab and LD ones swing immensely, and it doesn't look like we could put that down to changes in national support between the MRPs
You are making more than your wildest dreams and doing your civic duty by paying your fairly proportioned tax burden.
It’s a version of the Dutch Disease, aka The Resource Curse.
In countries that have a resource (oil say) that provides guaranteed minimum levels of return, investment gravitates to that, and the rest of the economy is strangled by it.
See many oil producing countries and their battles to not have an economy that is 90%+ oil dominated.
The Norwegian Oil fund was setup (and structure), in large part to prevent this happening.
In the U.K. property investment has a similar function and result.
Its everything else about him which is dangerous.
And its very dangerous to try to extrapolate from a local byelection to a Presidential election.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-24/ty-article/.premium/israeli-army-weighs-plan-to-arm-west-bank-settlements-with-anti-tank-missiles/0000018d-3b7e-d32b-adcf-ff7e83330000
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/09/west-bank-palestinians-israeli-settlers-attacks-idf/
If it's affecting Republican seats in Alabama ...
And which would convert into legal nationally at four months (or longer) the next time the Dems controlled the Presidency and Congress.
Trump really doesn't care about abortion but he does care that it might be damaging to him.
It also a state seat which has been trending Dem and where the election was caused by a resignation for electoral fraud.
Abortion is an issue but its more of a 2.5% issue than a 25% one.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/31/second-home-owners-are-running-for-the-exit-as-tax-changes-bite
'Banks must be incentivised to supply business loans on much less onerous and flexible terms, and the pension system must be boosted and organised to invest in fast-growing companies based on frontier new technologies. A big multibillion private sector wealth fund – already mooted by some in the City – must work in concert with a public sector wealth fund to invest in what will be the great companies of tomorrow, ensuring they stay British-owned to anchor our economy'
All fine but why does he not follow through on WHY people would rather not lend to or invest in fast-growing companies?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/31/will-hutton-this-time-no-mistakes-extract?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Slightly odd question: have any PBers ever been in a situation where you've had two hotel rooms booked for the same night in different hotels, so that you've had a choice of which one to stay in? (Hopefully this would be where someone else made a mistake with the booking rather than yourself).
Interesting that it is Adam Tomkins who is quoted here:
'Adam Tomkins, a former Tory MSP and convener of Holyrood’s justice committee who was closely involved with the passage of the bill in 2021, said: “Asserting that sex is a biological fact or that it is not changed just by virtue of the gender by which someone chooses to identify is not and never can be a hate crime under this legislation.”
Tomkins and others have warned that social media postings and some reporting on the act has wrongly suggested that it is criminalising comments that are merely offensive to others.'
Investing in 'trade' or business is for the 'exploiters' from Josiah Bounderby to Bradly Hardacre.
But different MRPs can use different variables that could make certain constituencies behave very differently.
I think the use at general elections is still too nascent to be able to judge who has the more representative model.
There are simply too many vested interests with too much power to permit restructuring of the economy in the manner that you describe. Your little machine shop, and the people who work in it, will be taxed to death so that landlords can enjoy their profits and pensioners in million pounds houses can be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed, and transmit the remaining value of their estates tax free to the heirs once they shuffle off. Productive economic activity simply isn't a priority in the UK.
That and the fact they will have a huge amount on and are obviously not going to do something that badly divides their MPs and voters.
Labour is quite institutionally conservative on this stuff in that it doesn't like rocking the boat. A few years ago that meant supporting this kind of thing in the hope it would lead to a quiet life from activists. Now, thanks to the internal pushback it's a row the party would rather not have.
Another point too is that the Labour left might not be as keen on it as they might have once been given its potential to criminalise a lot of the behaviour that Jewish groups describe as antisemitic but that the far left fiercely contest.
"Production of Taurus missiles has been halted in Germany due to a lack of orders, - DW.
"The defense industry is not allowed to produce goods without orders, and there are none," said Thomas Gottschild, a head of the German subsidiary of the MBDA consortium.
He emphasized that restarting production would require suppliers to retool and secure necessary materials."
https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1774678992047522020
He also can’t run away from the Dobbs decision as he put those SC judges into the court .
And note that Adam Tomkins quote earlier.
https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/votes-and-motions/S5M-24322