The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Education is mandatory for children until 18, yes.
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
That's another £33.5bn a year on top of their existing black hole, then.
Oh, hang on... they'd be doing this only for pensioners?!
Fucking hell. This is kamikaze stuff. Why would anyone under 68 even remotely consider voting for them?
To a reasonable order of magnitude approximation, they aren't.
(This is a hilarious example of the problem with being an incumbent government. The only reason this is an issue is because some nitwit is freezing the income tax threshold for the best part of a decade. And if the Prime Minister ever finds who that nitwit is, by golly he's in trouble.)
Total lunacy
Just push up the personal allowance for everyone to allow them to have their earnings or pension some respite from inflation
Personal allowance should be minimum £15,000pa preferably £20,000pa
And if the bottom of the NI threshold is pushed up with the personal allowance then workers still benefit more!
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Any idiot trying to push Trans shit again will be out on their arse and deservedly so.
In the next few years those of us still alive will look back on the reactionary right’s shibboleths and wonder how we ended up there.
You’ll not stop the tide of history. Same happened with gay rights. You’re on the lost side. Just a question of time.
The last year or so has shown that tide crashing into a number of immovable objects, and then moving out again.
There's no such thing as a "tide of history".
Sometimes things are a good idea, like gay rights.
Other time things are a bad idea, like Paedophile Information Exchange.
Treating trans people with respect is a good idea.
Treating women with disrespect is a bad idea.
Indeed. There is no such thing.
"The tide of history", otherwise known as "the Whig view of history" - that history evolves in a straight line in a progressive direction. It simply doesn't do that.
In fact we are lucky that somebody went to the trouble of writing an entire article on how the UK resolves its social issues, with an actual real-life worked example.
I hold "the Whig view of history" (though I didn't know it was called that) - that history evolves in a straight line in a generally progressive direction.
However, tempting though it is to use the "tide of history" cliche, it's a terrible metaphor because as we all know tides sweep out as regularly as they sweep in.
Humans have been evolving societally and intellectually at an incredible rate for the past 50,000 years. Yes there are regressive interludes but the overriding direction is progressive. That surely is undeniable.
Its completely deniable.
It evolves, but not in a particular direction. In hindsight you tend to view evolution as progressive but that's post hoc ego proctor hoc.
But you are completely ignoring all the stillborn failed evolutions or regressive ones. Or setting an impartial definition of progressive.
Here is my thinking.
500 years ago in every part of the world: - lives were short and brutal - starvation was a common experience - most people lived in slavery or serfdom, with almost zero opportunity to change that - women were second class citizens - disability was feared and stigmatised - education was the preserve of the top 1% - cruel physical punishment (often execution) was the norm for crimes or perceived crimes. - animal cruelty was ubiquitous - superstition ruled and ruined the lives of many - the rights of the individual were almost non-existent - difference was pilloried (often literally) ... I could go on.
Go back further and the situation was progressively worse.
We have come a long way incredibly quickly in evolutionary timescales, with setbacks and periods of regression for sure, but the overall direction of travel is clear.
But 500 years ago, in England anyway, civic infrastructure was worse than it was 1100 years before that. Between the retreat of the Romans and the Victorians no decent roads were built here. Sewerage in London was worse than it was under the Romans. Life expectancy was creeping back up but it dropped precipitously between 400 and 700 AD. Civilisations fall.
'setbacks and periods of regression'
But we don't look back 50,000 years and think it's been progress and regress but regression overall do we?
Pretty big “setback” if you ask me…a millennium long at least. And what of all the civilisations that are just, well, dust?
Let me put it another way, which era would you like to go back to, to live out the rest of your days, if you could?
Easy. I’d transport myself Quantum Leap style to be an English country parson somewhere with a nice living in about 1750 or so. Maybe in the Weald of Kent or the Berkshire Downs. Or maybe Newmarket for the horses. Somewhere like that. I fantasise about that a lot.
Sounds lovely in principle but the lack of medicine would not be ideal.
Especially anaesthesia.
Other than an awful lot of brandy…
Opium.
Shit dentists.
And generally rather shit if you were gay, with the risk of a trial ending with a noose or a free trip to Oz.
Careful now, we all know what ‘death recorded’ means, now don’t we!
The next Tory policy will be to give every pensioner the right to demand a pound of flesh and a pint of blood from anyone under 45.
It's honestly hateful what the Tories are doing to working age people in this country. They deserve to be wiped out.
Well they've also given them:
Full employment Affordable housing in much of the country A 4% reduction in national insurance University tuition fees frozen for seven years
Sure there's plenty that many working age people can be upset about but can we stop the imbecilic levels of exaggeration.
"Affordable housing" - are you frigging kidding me!?
In my part of the North West you'll struggle to find a 3 bedroom home for shy of the region of 200k to quarter of a million pounds. Which means if you want a 10% deposit you "merely" have to save up 20-25k for your deposit.
Housing is not remotely affordable anywhere, its simply somewhat less unaffordable than it is elsewhere.
Plus the leasehold scandal disproportionately affecting the young and first time buyers. I should have been able to sell up and move out of my flat years ago, but it's been unsaleable since 2017. As time after time after time Conservative ministers keep siding with developers, delaying, watering down, or outright reneging on promises to reform an utterly broken system.
Pot-smoking and fights at a northern training camp have raised fresh doubts about President Macron’s plans to make France’s three-year-old national service scheme compulsory for teenagers
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
People generally don't mind children being told what to do. They feel differently about telling adults what to do, which is what is proposed.
I've decided where I would time travel to. I would pile up a bunch of newspapers and go back to 1997. I'd track down Carol Vorderman and let her loose on all the shit that's happened. Give her a fast track to her anti-Tory radicalisation.
I'd then get rich winning the national lottery ten times in a row.
I'd then fly to New York and spend the next four years getting to know Donald Trump, before inviting him to a breakfast meeting on a crisp, early fall Tuesday morning. Somewhere with a view. I wouldn't show up.
I have been pondering, as I’m sure many other PBers have, whether Liz TRUSS could stage a remarkable comeback during the election campaign. It would be an eye-catching move. One to think carefully about.
She could claim that on account of the number of Tory MPs standing down, Rishi Sunak's coup has no standing and she is the legitimate leader of the party.
If the Tory Party is reduced to the 1997 level (or below) she could be one of the few "credible" candidates left.
They may well have been no worse off had they kept her (if the fall had been slightly less precipitous she might have weathered it), so given she really was offering a new approach it is conceivable some would go for her again, especially as those who remain will be in the safest seats and as a result possibly the more ideologically minded.
But I think she will still bear a brunt of anger for the whole debacle, and they'll go for fresh hands.
They'll only have 100-130 to choose from, so options will be limited.
in an alternative universe, Truss stayed on long enough to weather the storm but gets forced into an earlier election. Loses but has a clear message so doesn't lose as badly as Sunak is about to.
I suspect she might have weathered the storm if she'd paused for a few weeks after QEII's death, rather than proceeding with the mini-budget immediately after the funeral. And if she'd done so, it's certainly possible that she'd have been able to grow into the job before the (as you say, inevitable) early election.
But even if she had, I'm not sure that she'd have become any more palatable to MPs and CCHQ - and without their support, she'd probably have found herself in the same position Rishi is now, just a year earlier.
Liz Truss's fatal flaw was learnt from Dominic Cummings: the civil service and wider establishment is a malign lefty blob out to destroy you. Truss had a record of dismissing civil servants she disliked. In Downing Street this led her to dismiss or bypass "the adults in the room" that were trusted by the financial markets. And so all the bad things Rishi Sunak had warned would happen, happened. Goodnight Vienna.
This is utter rubbish. Truss's experience of the blob and their death grip on reform was developed over years of experience as a junior, then senior Minister. She has detailed it all in interviews and given practical examples. Her mistake was to assume that once you got to the level of PM, that type of interference stopped if you really had the political will to get things done. She found to her cost that that wasn't the case.
If you're interested in being informed, the triggernometry interview is good on this - the second section 'does voting matter' deals with Truss's experiences as a Minister.
I am very surprised the tories (to shore up a core vote and a little extra) at this stage have not said they will abolish inheritance tax - It worked about 12 years ago and whilst I dont personally agree with it (fat chance of any inhertiance for me or me accumulating enough assets to pay it ) it is not the most outrageous policy (unlike conscription )
Rumours on Twitter that Tories going to announce a triple lock in the personal allowance - but only for pensioners. If this is true then mega lolz.
What's disturbing is I can't decide if that is someone being mischievously satirical or not.
Someone who should know told me. Then I went on twitter and found a source.
But tbf, he may have got it from that source...
I think it's time for me to get five likes or more for scooping this ladies and gents, especially since my version was more accurate than the twitter one
I did wonder with the new generation of men, whether lads' mags would re-appear.
This is the last gasp of the reactionary right.
Before the rest of the country moves on. Deporting boat people to Rwanda will be one of those things we look back on and wonder what they were taking. Trans rights will most certainly come back onto the agenda and with a huge majority there won’t be a lot to stop it, but it will be in the context of people generally chilling out and ceasing to judge those who want to identify how the fuck they want. And as for beating up the disabled … well ...
Any idiot trying to push Trans shit again will be out on their arse and deservedly so.
In the next few years those of us still alive will look back on the reactionary right’s shibboleths and wonder how we ended up there.
You’ll not stop the tide of history. Same happened with gay rights. You’re on the lost side. Just a question of time.
The last year or so has shown that tide crashing into a number of immovable objects, and then moving out again.
There's no such thing as a "tide of history".
Sometimes things are a good idea, like gay rights.
Other time things are a bad idea, like Paedophile Information Exchange.
Treating trans people with respect is a good idea.
Treating women with disrespect is a bad idea.
Indeed. There is no such thing.
"The tide of history", otherwise known as "the Whig view of history" - that history evolves in a straight line in a progressive direction. It simply doesn't do that.
In fact we are lucky that somebody went to the trouble of writing an entire article on how the UK resolves its social issues, with an actual real-life worked example.
I hold "the Whig view of history" (though I didn't know it was called that) - that history evolves in a straight line in a generally progressive direction.
However, tempting though it is to use the "tide of history" cliche, it's a terrible metaphor because as we all know tides sweep out as regularly as they sweep in.
Humans have been evolving societally and intellectually at an incredible rate for the past 50,000 years. Yes there are regressive interludes but the overriding direction is progressive. That surely is undeniable.
Its completely deniable.
It evolves, but not in a particular direction. In hindsight you tend to view evolution as progressive but that's post hoc ego proctor hoc.
But you are completely ignoring all the stillborn failed evolutions or regressive ones. Or setting an impartial definition of progressive.
Here is my thinking.
500 years ago in every part of the world: - lives were short and brutal - starvation was a common experience - most people lived in slavery or serfdom, with almost zero opportunity to change that - women were second class citizens - disability was feared and stigmatised - education was the preserve of the top 1% - cruel physical punishment (often execution) was the norm for crimes or perceived crimes. - animal cruelty was ubiquitous - superstition ruled and ruined the lives of many - the rights of the individual were almost non-existent - difference was pilloried (often literally) ... I could go on.
Go back further and the situation was progressively worse.
We have come a long way incredibly quickly in evolutionary timescales, with setbacks and periods of regression for sure, but the overall direction of travel is clear.
But 500 years ago, in England anyway, civic infrastructure was worse than it was 1100 years before that. Between the retreat of the Romans and the Victorians no decent roads were built here. Sewerage in London was worse than it was under the Romans. Life expectancy was creeping back up but it dropped precipitously between 400 and 700 AD. Civilisations fall.
'setbacks and periods of regression'
But we don't look back 50,000 years and think it's been progress and regress but regression overall do we?
Pretty big “setback” if you ask me…a millennium long at least. And what of all the civilisations that are just, well, dust?
Let me put it another way, which era would you like to go back to, to live out the rest of your days, if you could?
Easy. I’d transport myself Quantum Leap style to be an English country parson somewhere with a nice living in about 1750 or so. Maybe in the Weald of Kent or the Berkshire Downs. Or maybe Newmarket for the horses. Somewhere like that. I fantasise about that a lot.
Sounds lovely in principle but the lack of medicine would not be ideal.
Especially anaesthesia.
Other than an awful lot of brandy…
Opium.
Shit dentists.
And generally rather shit if you were gay, with the risk of a trial ending with a noose or a free trip to Oz.
Careful now, we all know what ‘death recorded’ means, now don’t we!
(And, strictly, the policy after 1835 was only by discretion. The death penalty remained on the books till 1861, so the risk was there that some Victorian equivalent of our Tories would go all woke hunt and reimpose it ...)
PS Some did get prison sentences in the UK anyway. Would need to check the details though.
I am very surprised the tories (to shore up a core vote and a little extra) at this stage have not said they will abolish inheritance tax - It worked about 12 years ago and whilst I dont personally agree with it (fat chance of any inhertiance for me or me accumulating enough assets to pay it ) it is not the most outrageous policy (unlike conscription )
I am very surprised the tories (to shore up a core vote and a little extra) at this stage have not said they will abolish inheritance tax - It worked about 12 years ago and whilst I dont personally agree with it (fat chance of any inhertiance for me or me accumulating enough assets to pay it ) it is not the most outrageous policy (unlike conscription )
I personally think they're going to. And it will immediately be turned against Rishi cause he can't do anything right and it is noticeable that he has money. Similarly death penalty or leaving ECHR.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Education is mandatory for children until 18, yes.
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
I broadly agree.
However, some people under 18 have weekend or full time jobs, care for family members and so on. An example I made earlier were the farmers in my class who would often work for 3 hours before school. So the adult/child distinction is blurred.
And I have no fundamental issue with it being compulsory. Consider jury service.
The difference is that it's another burden on young people, particularly those from the poorest backgrounds. They and their families often rely on their incomes - unless the child element of benefits like UC will be extended to children not in full time education?
It's also part of the dangerous creep towards a reliance on volunteering to provide essential public services like social care. Furthermore, it's been suggested as a way to subvert labour markets by providing free labour to sectors such as agriculture.
It's an unusual policy in that people from all schools of political thought can find something wrong with it.
The Labour Party is a Democratic Socialist Party. It says so on my membership card.
It would be fecking weird if the leader of a Democratic Socialist Party wasn't a Socialist.
Labour has never been a socialist party, whatever Starmer and the membership card may say. It’s a party of labour. The two are not the same, and the early days of the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation, and the eventual Labour Representation Committee saw the union-dominated “party of labour” argument win the day.
There are some really interesting counterfactuals about what could have happened if Hyndman, Grayson, Blatchford and Morris had been the ones to set the course of Britain’s left wing parties rather than Hardie and Macdonald.
Tony Blair described himself as a socialist before the 1997 election.
Is there any betting on which seat will get the smallest majority ? If not be good to do a sweep stake or opinions on here
It's really hard to pinpoint an individual seat for such a specific thing, given you'd probably have to first think about what overall swing is likely, then try to predict any local variation which might be higher or lower, then apply that to the current majorities, taking account of changes to seat boundaries.
The most marginal seat last time was Fermanagh and South Tyrone at 57 votes, and it has been even more marginal in the past. But you'd probably need a NI expert, and know whether the unionist parties will cooperate as they sometimes do there.
Most other marginals last time probably won't be this time - I believe in 2017 the most marginal was Fife NE by 2 votes, which the LDs held by 1300 in 2019. Which is pretty marginal in most places but Scotland has a lot of close races.
Rumours on Twitter that Tories going to announce a triple lock in the personal allowance - but only for pensioners. If this is true then mega lolz.
What's disturbing is I can't decide if that is someone being mischievously satirical or not.
Someone who should know told me. Then I went on twitter and found a source.
But tbf, he may have got it from that source...
I think it's time for me to get five likes or more for scooping this ladies and gents, especially since my version was more accurate than the twitter one
Just saw Mercer in the times radio podcast. WOW. He looks like a man who has given up ... he offers nothing buttotal exasperation. He is making excuses for why there is no message discipline, which is catastrophic for a GE campaign. His tone screams: I don't believe a word of what I am saying... I am just saying what I have to.... crazy to witness this kind of performance this early in a campaign. I am saying this as marketing academic: sunak is going to regret going 6 weeks long. He wanted to reveal labour... his own party is revealing itself. Who would get excited about this????
He has the air of someone who's never been on a video call before.
It's almost a surprise that he didn't stand up and show us all that he was only clothed from the waist up...
Wow James Daly has an equally crash and burn interview.... wow.... oh dear oh dear... the deputy chair ... Holy cow, what a shambles. I am going to repeat: the tories are going to totally unravel before the 4th of july.
The state pension does of course count as taxable income, but it is never taxed directly. So, for example, when my state pension rises, my work pension automatically reduces as it is taxed more.
The dilemma is for those who have absolutely no income other than the state pension. If this rises above the personal allowance, a few million poorer pensioners would have to pay tax on the surplus amount - it would likely be a very small amount, and would no doubt cost more to collect (through self-assessment if the DWP won't tax the pension at source - good luck with that) than it would raise. So it would make some sense to tie the state pension to the personal allowance.
If we want to collect more tax from wealthier pensioners, there are much easier ways to do it. Having different personal allowances for pensioners and workers is palpably absurd.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Education is mandatory for children until 18, yes.
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
One of the maddening things is that there are the germs of a couple of maybe decent (but not cheap) ideas here.
One is a widely-available, competitive but easy application process Public Service Internship, a year between school/college and university/employment/apprenticeship. No reason why it just has to be military.
The other is making helping out in the community a natural part of the compulsory education experience. Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, International Baccalaureate... they've all got it. Schools and colleges just need a smallish amount of cash and a larger amount of staff time, and Rishi claimed to be hoping to reform post-16 education anyway. It would have fitted in there pretty well without too much need to reinvent the wheel. (Couple of conditions I would put on this- it should fit within the school/college timetable and the main reward participants should get is the learning, and the projects should be nice-to-haves, not core functions of government. That's where the Sunak Grand Design stuffed up.)
But it's all got lost due to Rishi's unwillingness to spend money (given a chance, he would have axed NCS altogether) and the Conservative obsession with fluffing boomers with phrases like National Service. And that looks like it's discredited the whole thing.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Because these people are adults. Many of whom have responsibilities and aspirations that aren't best served by the government telling them what they have to do for 25 days a year - and it's not education, it's forced labour. You don't get a useful qualification (unless you're planning to join a related service - in which case you might volunteer for a voluntary scheme) at the end of it.
If for, example, you study full-time at college but need to work weekends to help pay your way at home or the rent, then it's a massive inconvenience. If you're caring for a parent, brother or sister, or your own child it is too. Or volunteer for valuable things that don't qualify or are looking to do to further your professional skills in a specific area.
It's also an insult because younger generations have been made poorer and had rights taken away by their elders, who now want to make their lives even harder because of their creepy World War 2 fetish and failure to come to terms with how feckless and selfish they have been themselves.
Seeing as you're not against forcing into work that makes their lives harder but provides an education and sense of community. How about we do National Service but for pensioners who own their own home? They can work the second jobs many young people have to to afford rent in such the inflated property market they benefited from.
Oh. Thought not.
Oh please. If we need to create an exemption system for those caring for a relative or doing other, genuine volunteer work, then we can make that part of a scheme. I bet it is less than 2% of the 18 year old population.
And the reason why it makes sense to do it for this group is because the primary benefit of doing it is equipping people for the lives ahead of them. Therefore it makes sense to do it with people entering the workforce, not those who have left it. Too many British people lack a real work ethic or sense of service and I am glad Sunak is a politician actually willing to do something about it.
As for house and rental prices, that is overwhelmingly driven by the population growing far more quickly than construction can keep up. The best approach to that is to limit immigration to those who contribute more than they cost the system. The only PM that has actually done anything about that is Sunak, with meaningful income thresholds and limits on student dependents.
Just saw Mercer in the times radio podcast. WOW. He looks like a man who has given up ... he offers nothing buttotal exasperation. He is making excuses for why there is no message discipline, which is catastrophic for a GE campaign. His tone screams: I don't believe a word of what I am saying... I am just saying what I have to.... crazy to witness this kind of performance this early in a campaign. I am saying this as marketing academic: sunak is going to regret going 6 weeks long. He wanted to reveal labour... his own party is revealing itself. Who would get excited about this????
He has the air of someone who's never been on a video call before.
It's almost a surprise that he didn't stand up and show us all that he was only clothed from the waist up...
Wow James Daly has an equally crash and burn interview.... wow.... oh dear oh dear... the deputy chair ... Holy cow, what a shambles. I am going to repeat: the tories are going to totally unravel before the 4th of july.
UK politics will offer ageing boomers literally anything EXCEPT a functioning NHS and properly funded social care, ie the things that actually keep them alive.
quadruple lock on pensions, take your estate out of inheritance tax, no to wealth taxes, bring back blue passports/national service/imperial measures? Absolutely! Waiting less than 24 hours in A&E for a bed, in your 80s? Sorry no can do.
Is there any betting on which seat will get the smallest majority ? If not be good to do a sweep stake or opinions on here
It's really hard to pinpoint an individual seat for such a specific thing, given you'd probably have to first think about what overall swing is likely, then try to predict any local variation which might be higher or lower, then apply that to the current majorities, taking account of changes to seat boundaries.
The most marginal seat last time was Fermanagh and South Tyrone at 57 votes, and it has been even more marginal in the past. But you'd probably need a NI expert, and know whether the unionist parties will cooperate as they sometimes do there.
Most other marginals last time probably won't be this time - I believe in 2017 the most marginal was Fife NE by 2 votes, which the LDs held by 1300 in 2019. Which is pretty marginal in most places but Scotland has a lot of close races.
Was announced today that Unionists wouldn't be co-operating there.
The Labour Party is a Democratic Socialist Party. It says so on my membership card.
It would be fecking weird if the leader of a Democratic Socialist Party wasn't a Socialist.
Labour has never been a socialist party, whatever Starmer and the membership card may say. It’s a party of labour. The two are not the same, and the early days of the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation, and the eventual Labour Representation Committee saw the union-dominated “party of labour” argument win the day.
There are some really interesting counterfactuals about what could have happened if Hyndman, Grayson, Blatchford and Morris had been the ones to set the course of Britain’s left wing parties rather than Hardie and Macdonald.
Tony Blair described himself as a socialist before the 1997 election.
I say unto you that Jesus himself was a socialist.
Well, the Tory campaign seems to be built entirely on constant restatement of the contention that Starmer has no plan.
Which might work if it wasn’t wholly evident from the last 8 years that the Tories haven’t had one either.
If this is the best they can do, then the wipeout may yet be on.
Ironically it's followed up with clear Tory plan. What that is I can't discern.
Fuck anyone working for a living, look after pensioners.
And block construction so that house prices remain high.
Jeez. You seem more annoyed about this than I am! Relax. They're digging their own grave.
Hunt in cutting NI had correctly identified what is wrong with our tax system and was starting to fix it, but I didn't trust Sunak since his instinct was the opposite.
This campaign has Sunak all over it. Its absolutely awful. Hunt seems to have been sidelined completely.
Well, the Tory campaign seems to be built entirely on constant restatement of the contention that Starmer has no plan.
Which might work if it wasn’t wholly evident from the last 8 years that the Tories haven’t had one either.
If this is the best they can do, then the wipeout may yet be on.
Ironically it's followed up with clear Tory plan. What that is I can't discern.
Fuck anyone working for a living, look after pensioners.
And block construction so that house prices remain high.
Jeez. You seem more annoyed about this than I am! Relax. They're digging their own grave.
Hunt in cutting NI had correctly identified what is wrong with our tax system and was starting to fix it, but I didn't trust Sunak since his instinct was the opposite.
This campaign has Sunak all over it. Its absolutely awful. Hunt seems to have been sidelined completely.
He is busy trying to save his seat.
Sunak is too stupid to realise his seat is also in jeopardy.
The state pension does of course count as taxable income, but it is never taxed directly. So, for example, when my state pension rises, my work pension automatically reduces as it is taxed more.
The dilemma is for those who have absolutely no income other than the state pension. If this rises above the personal allowance, a few million poorer pensioners would have to pay tax on the surplus amount - it would likely be a very small amount, and would no doubt cost more to collect (through self-assessment if the DWP won't tax the pension at source - good luck with that) than it would raise. So it would make some sense to tie the state pension to the personal allowance.
If we want to collect more tax from wealthier pensioners, there are much easier ways to do it. Having different personal allowances for pensioners and workers is palpably absurd.
Yes but. How does that argument differ from someone working earning £13k? It would be an equally small amount.
Well, the Tory campaign seems to be built entirely on constant restatement of the contention that Starmer has no plan.
Which might work if it wasn’t wholly evident from the last 8 years that the Tories haven’t had one either.
If this is the best they can do, then the wipeout may yet be on.
Ironically it's followed up with clear Tory plan. What that is I can't discern.
Fuck anyone working for a living, look after pensioners.
And block construction so that house prices remain high.
Jeez. You seem more annoyed about this than I am! Relax. They're digging their own grave.
Hunt in cutting NI had correctly identified what is wrong with our tax system and was starting to fix it, but I didn't trust Sunak since his instinct was the opposite.
This campaign has Sunak all over it. Its absolutely awful. Hunt seems to have been sidelined completely.
The Conservatives made a mistake in not electing Hunt leader in 2022.
Well, the Tory campaign seems to be built entirely on constant restatement of the contention that Starmer has no plan.
Which might work if it wasn’t wholly evident from the last 8 years that the Tories haven’t had one either.
If this is the best they can do, then the wipeout may yet be on.
Ironically it's followed up with clear Tory plan. What that is I can't discern.
Fuck anyone working for a living, look after pensioners.
And block construction so that house prices remain high.
Jeez. You seem more annoyed about this than I am! Relax. They're digging their own grave.
Hunt in cutting NI had correctly identified what is wrong with our tax system and was starting to fix it, but I didn't trust Sunak since his instinct was the opposite.
This campaign has Sunak all over it. Its absolutely awful. Hunt seems to have been sidelined completely.
It makes sense. The Tories are losing loads of votes to Reform in the older age groups, and as older people are spread more evenly around the country, their votes are more valuable than those from working people.
Going for working people would also require a massive pivot to the centre or left. That's impossible now.
I've decided where I would time travel to. I would pile up a bunch of newspapers and go back to 1997. I'd track down Carol Vorderman and let her loose on all the shit that's happened. Give her a fast track to her anti-Tory radicalisation.
I'd then get rich winning the national lottery ten times in a row.
I'd then fly to New York and spend the next four years getting to know Donald Trump, before inviting him to a breakfast meeting on a crisp, early fall Tuesday morning. Somewhere with a view. I wouldn't show up.
so you would priortize Carol Vordeman's political education over becoming a multi millionaire or killing Trump (if thats your thing ) - Wow you must really fancy her!!
I have been pondering, as I’m sure many other PBers have, whether Liz TRUSS could stage a remarkable comeback during the election campaign. It would be an eye-catching move. One to think carefully about.
She could claim that on account of the number of Tory MPs standing down, Rishi Sunak's coup has no standing and she is the legitimate leader of the party.
If the Tory Party is reduced to the 1997 level (or below) she could be one of the few "credible" candidates left.
They may well have been no worse off had they kept her (if the fall had been slightly less precipitous she might have weathered it), so given she really was offering a new approach it is conceivable some would go for her again, especially as those who remain will be in the safest seats and as a result possibly the more ideologically minded.
But I think she will still bear a brunt of anger for the whole debacle, and they'll go for fresh hands.
They'll only have 100-130 to choose from, so options will be limited.
in an alternative universe, Truss stayed on long enough to weather the storm but gets forced into an earlier election. Loses but has a clear message so doesn't lose as badly as Sunak is about to.
I suspect she might have weathered the storm if she'd paused for a few weeks after QEII's death, rather than proceeding with the mini-budget immediately after the funeral. And if she'd done so, it's certainly possible that she'd have been able to grow into the job before the (as you say, inevitable) early election.
But even if she had, I'm not sure that she'd have become any more palatable to MPs and CCHQ - and without their support, she'd probably have found herself in the same position Rishi is now, just a year earlier.
Liz Truss's fatal flaw was learnt from Dominic Cummings: the civil service and wider establishment is a malign lefty blob out to destroy you. Truss had a record of dismissing civil servants she disliked. In Downing Street this led her to dismiss or bypass "the adults in the room" that were trusted by the financial markets. And so all the bad things Rishi Sunak had warned would happen, happened. Goodnight Vienna.
This is utter rubbish. Truss's experience of the blob and their death grip on reform was developed over years of experience as a junior, then senior Minister. She has detailed it all in interviews and given practical examples. Her mistake was to assume that once you got to the level of PM, that type of interference stopped if you really had the political will to get things done. She found to her cost that that wasn't the case.
If you're interested in being informed, the triggernometry interview is good on this - the second section 'does voting matter' deals with Truss's experiences as a Minister.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Education is mandatory for children until 18, yes.
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
One of the maddening things is that there are the germs of a couple of maybe decent (but not cheap) ideas here.
One is a widely-available, competitive but easy application process Public Service Internship, a year between school/college and university/employment/apprenticeship. No reason why it just has to be military.
The other is making helping out in the community a natural part of the compulsory education experience. Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, International Baccalaureate... they've all got it. Schools and colleges just need a smallish amount of cash and a larger amount of staff time, and Rishi claimed to be hoping to reform post-16 education anyway. It would have fitted in there pretty well without too much need to reinvent the wheel. (Couple of conditions I would put on this- it should fit within the school/college timetable and the main reward participants should get is the learning, and the projects should be nice-to-haves, not core functions of government. That's where the Sunak Grand Design stuffed up.)
But it's all got lost due to Rishi's unwillingness to spend money (given a chance, he would have axed NCS altogether) and the Conservative obsession with fluffing boomers with phrases like National Service. And that looks like it's discredited the whole thing.
100% agreed.
As I said before, to get my Baccalaureate I had to do 150 hours of CAS. 50 hours each of [C]reativity, [A]ction and [S]ervice. Which I could choose to do on my own or my school could support and give opportunities towards. Which could be done at hours of my choosing, not proscribed weekends.
Reform the education system to include something like that, great! Giving young people a well rounded education? Fantastic.
But telling adults they must do certain stuff at weekends when they have other responsibilities already, like jobs? Stupid, stupid, stupid, ignorant idea.
But then Rishi probably never relied upon a weekend job to pay the bills when he was 18 and he seems completely out of touch with anyone who does.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Because these people are adults. Many of whom have responsibilities and aspirations that aren't best served by the government telling them what they have to do for 25 days a year - and it's not education, it's forced labour. You don't get a useful qualification (unless you're planning to join a related service - in which case you might volunteer for a voluntary scheme) at the end of it.
If for, example, you study full-time at college but need to work weekends to help pay your way at home or the rent, then it's a massive inconvenience. If you're caring for a parent, brother or sister, or your own child it is too. Or volunteer for valuable things that don't qualify or are looking to do to further your professional skills in a specific area.
It's also an insult because younger generations have been made poorer and had rights taken away by their elders, who now want to make their lives even harder because of their creepy World War 2 fetish and failure to come to terms with how feckless and selfish they have been themselves.
Seeing as you're not against forcing into work that makes their lives harder but provides an education and sense of community. How about we do National Service but for pensioners who own their own home? They can work the second jobs many young people have to to afford rent in such the inflated property market they benefited from.
Oh. Thought not.
Oh please. If we need to create an exemption system for those caring for a relative or doing other, genuine volunteer work, then we can make that part of a scheme. I bet it is less than 2% of the 18 year old population.
And the reason why it makes sense to do it for this group is because the primary benefit of doing it is equipping people for the lives ahead of them. Therefore it makes sense to do it with people entering the workforce, not those who have left it. Too many British people lack a real work ethic or sense of service and I am glad Sunak is a politician actually willing to do something about it.
As for house and rental prices, that is overwhelmingly driven by the population growing far more quickly than construction can keep up. The best approach to that is to limit immigration to those who contribute more than they cost the system. The only PM that has actually done anything about that is Sunak, with meaningful income thresholds and limits on student dependents.
Equip them in the vital skill of fruit picking? Teach them the ethic that work doesn't pay and you have no control?
TB tribute act, though I don't think Sir Keir would ever have been this balls out.
I am a socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. Maiden speech, House of Commons, July 6 1983
The state pension does of course count as taxable income, but it is never taxed directly. So, for example, when my state pension rises, my work pension automatically reduces as it is taxed more.
The dilemma is for those who have absolutely no income other than the state pension. If this rises above the personal allowance, a few million poorer pensioners would have to pay tax on the surplus amount - it would likely be a very small amount, and would no doubt cost more to collect (through self-assessment if the DWP won't tax the pension at source - good luck with that) than it would raise. So it would make some sense to tie the state pension to the personal allowance.
If we want to collect more tax from wealthier pensioners, there are much easier ways to do it. Having different personal allowances for pensioners and workers is palpably absurd.
Yes but. How does that argument differ from someone working earning £13k? It would be an equally small amount.
Well, I don't think somebody earning £13k should be taxed at all. But the point I was trying to make, possibly clumsily, is that there's no current mechanism for collecting tax from a pensioner receiving nothing but the state pension, whereas PAYE for the low-paid worker is cheap and easy. Like everything though, I don't think the Tories have thought it through.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Education is mandatory for children until 18, yes.
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
One of the maddening things is that there are the germs of a couple of maybe decent (but not cheap) ideas here.
One is a widely-available, competitive but easy application process Public Service Internship, a year between school/college and university/employment/apprenticeship. No reason why it just has to be military.
The other is making helping out in the community a natural part of the compulsory education experience. Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, International Baccalaureate... they've all got it. Schools and colleges just need a smallish amount of cash and a larger amount of staff time, and Rishi claimed to be hoping to reform post-16 education anyway. It would have fitted in there pretty well without too much need to reinvent the wheel. (Couple of conditions I would put on this- it should fit within the school/college timetable and the main reward participants should get is the learning, and the projects should be nice-to-haves, not core functions of government. That's where the Sunak Grand Design stuffed up.)
But it's all got lost due to Rishi's unwillingness to spend money (given a chance, he would have axed NCS altogether) and the Conservative obsession with fluffing boomers with phrases like National Service. And that looks like it's discredited the whole thing.
There's been nothing to stop Labour formulating a more realistic proposal.
In 1945, 1964, 1997 Labour came to power with ideas on how to modernise and reform the country.
Whereas now Labour offer nothing but being a repository of votes for getting rid of the Conservatives and SNP.
I do think some journalists are in danger of getting carried away. I imagine parties focus group the impact of most announcements, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything that Sunak wants to gauge what voters really thought of it.
I've decided where I would time travel to. I would pile up a bunch of newspapers and go back to 1997. I'd track down Carol Vorderman and let her loose on all the shit that's happened. Give her a fast track to her anti-Tory radicalisation.
I'd then get rich winning the national lottery ten times in a row.
I'd then fly to New York and spend the next four years getting to know Donald Trump, before inviting him to a breakfast meeting on a crisp, early fall Tuesday morning. Somewhere with a view. I wouldn't show up.
so you would priortize Carol Vordeman's political education over becoming a multi millionaire or killing Trump (if thats your thing ) - Wow you must really fancy her!!
I don't really give two shits about Vorderman... it was just a callback to another conversation. I thought it would be mildly humorous.
Also, I didn't say I would be killing anyone. Mere inviting someone to admire a clear, blue, sunny morning in September and standing them up wouldn't normally result in their demise. And if -- somehow -- it did, that's not really my doing now, is it?
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Because these people are adults. Many of whom have responsibilities and aspirations that aren't best served by the government telling them what they have to do for 25 days a year - and it's not education, it's forced labour. You don't get a useful qualification (unless you're planning to join a related service - in which case you might volunteer for a voluntary scheme) at the end of it.
If for, example, you study full-time at college but need to work weekends to help pay your way at home or the rent, then it's a massive inconvenience. If you're caring for a parent, brother or sister, or your own child it is too. Or volunteer for valuable things that don't qualify or are looking to do to further your professional skills in a specific area.
It's also an insult because younger generations have been made poorer and had rights taken away by their elders, who now want to make their lives even harder because of their creepy World War 2 fetish and failure to come to terms with how feckless and selfish they have been themselves.
Seeing as you're not against forcing into work that makes their lives harder but provides an education and sense of community. How about we do National Service but for pensioners who own their own home? They can work the second jobs many young people have to to afford rent in such the inflated property market they benefited from.
Oh. Thought not.
Oh please. If we need to create an exemption system for those caring for a relative or doing other, genuine volunteer work, then we can make that part of a scheme. I bet it is less than 2% of the 18 year old population.
And the reason why it makes sense to do it for this group is because the primary benefit of doing it is equipping people for the lives ahead of them. Therefore it makes sense to do it with people entering the workforce, not those who have left it. Too many British people lack a real work ethic or sense of service and I am glad Sunak is a politician actually willing to do something about it.
As for house and rental prices, that is overwhelmingly driven by the population growing far more quickly than construction can keep up. The best approach to that is to limit immigration to those who contribute more than they cost the system. The only PM that has actually done anything about that is Sunak, with meaningful income thresholds and limits on student dependents.
"Too many British people lack a real work ethic or sense of service and I am glad Sunak is a politician actually willing to do something about it."
Oh do sod off you insulting fool. What a great example of the deluded madness of the selfish generation. Younger people are working harder than ever - for worse equivalent pay. I bet they work harder and have a stronger sense of service than you do to your fellow citizens and the way you have voted for things that have made their lives worse.
People like you could certainly do with National Service far more than the young, as you are so selfish and ignorant of others' lives that you need it far more than they do.
I do think some journalists are in danger of getting carried away. I imagine parties focus group the impact of most announcements, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything that Sunak wants to gauge what voters really thought of it.
Typically they focus group announcements before they make them. It is atypical to ask "How badly did I fuck that up?"
Has there been an election where the two main party leaders are so bad ( dull) at public speaking? Oh for the days of Thatcher against Kinnock or even Blair and Hague
The state pension does of course count as taxable income, but it is never taxed directly. So, for example, when my state pension rises, my work pension automatically reduces as it is taxed more.
The dilemma is for those who have absolutely no income other than the state pension. If this rises above the personal allowance, a few million poorer pensioners would have to pay tax on the surplus amount - it would likely be a very small amount, and would no doubt cost more to collect (through self-assessment if the DWP won't tax the pension at source - good luck with that) than it would raise. So it would make some sense to tie the state pension to the personal allowance.
If we want to collect more tax from wealthier pensioners, there are much easier ways to do it. Having different personal allowances for pensioners and workers is palpably absurd.
Yes but. How does that argument differ from someone working earning £13k? It would be an equally small amount.
Well, I don't think somebody earning £13k should be taxed at all. But the point I was trying to make, possibly clumsily, is that there's no current mechanism for collecting tax from a pensioner receiving nothing but the state pension, whereas PAYE for the low-paid worker is cheap and easy. Like everything though, I don't think the Tories have thought it through.
Setting up such a mechanism? There was no mechanism for checking whether or not UC claimants had £6k in savings either. Demanding access to their bank accounts was put on Statute stat.
I've decided where I would time travel to. I would pile up a bunch of newspapers and go back to 1997. I'd track down Carol Vorderman and let her loose on all the shit that's happened. Give her a fast track to her anti-Tory radicalisation.
I'd then get rich winning the national lottery ten times in a row.
I'd then fly to New York and spend the next four years getting to know Donald Trump, before inviting him to a breakfast meeting on a crisp, early fall Tuesday morning. Somewhere with a view. I wouldn't show up.
so you would priortize Carol Vordeman's political education over becoming a multi millionaire or killing Trump (if thats your thing ) - Wow you must really fancy her!!
I don't really give two shits about Vorderman... it was just a callback to another conversation. I thought it would be mildly humorous.
Also, I didn't say I would be killing anyone. Mere inviting someone to admire a clear, blue, sunny morning in September and standing them up wouldn't normally result in their demise. And if -- somehow -- it did, that's not really my doing now, is it?
Just saw Mercer in the times radio podcast. WOW. He looks like a man who has given up ... he offers nothing buttotal exasperation. He is making excuses for why there is no message discipline, which is catastrophic for a GE campaign. His tone screams: I don't believe a word of what I am saying... I am just saying what I have to.... crazy to witness this kind of performance this early in a campaign. I am saying this as marketing academic: sunak is going to regret going 6 weeks long. He wanted to reveal labour... his own party is revealing itself. Who would get excited about this????
He has the air of someone who's never been on a video call before.
It's almost a surprise that he didn't stand up and show us all that he was only clothed from the waist up...
Wow James Daly has an equally crash and burn interview.... wow.... oh dear oh dear... the deputy chair ... Holy cow, what a shambles. I am going to repeat: the tories are going to totally unravel before the 4th of july.
There aren't many vetrans of 1997 and 2001 left on the Conservative benches, and even fewer are in any sort of senior role. (There's Andrew Mitchell, but at a glance, I can't see any others.) The class of 2005 gives you Shapps, Davies the Welsh and Gove, but the Conservatives were on the up by them.
How many of them have the experience needed to develop the inner fortitude to keep smiling as the ship sinks beneath the waves?
We're about to find out, but the omens aren't good.
Has there been an election where the two main party leaders are so bad ( dull) at public speaking? Oh for the days of Thatcher against Kinnock or even Blair and Hague
Count Binface vs Farage is our future. We're still winning compared to the USA I guess.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Education is mandatory for children until 18, yes.
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
One of the maddening things is that there are the germs of a couple of maybe decent (but not cheap) ideas here.
One is a widely-available, competitive but easy application process Public Service Internship, a year between school/college and university/employment/apprenticeship. No reason why it just has to be military.
The other is making helping out in the community a natural part of the compulsory education experience. Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, International Baccalaureate... they've all got it. Schools and colleges just need a smallish amount of cash and a larger amount of staff time, and Rishi claimed to be hoping to reform post-16 education anyway. It would have fitted in there pretty well without too much need to reinvent the wheel. (Couple of conditions I would put on this- it should fit within the school/college timetable and the main reward participants should get is the learning, and the projects should be nice-to-haves, not core functions of government. That's where the Sunak Grand Design stuffed up.)
But it's all got lost due to Rishi's unwillingness to spend money (given a chance, he would have axed NCS altogether) and the Conservative obsession with fluffing boomers with phrases like National Service. And that looks like it's discredited the whole thing.
100% agreed.
As I said before, to get my Baccalaureate I had to do 150 hours of CAS. 50 hours each of [C]reativity, [A]ction and [S]ervice. Which I could choose to do on my own or my school could support and give opportunities towards. Which could be done at hours of my choosing, not proscribed weekends.
Reform the education system to include something like that, great! Giving young people a well rounded education? Fantastic.
But telling adults they must do certain stuff at weekends when they have other responsibilities already, like jobs? Stupid, stupid, stupid, ignorant idea.
But then Rishi probably never relied upon a weekend job to pay the bills when he was 18 and he seems completely out of touch with anyone who does.
Exactly this. The big screw up is that in making it a mandatory "National Service" it's been designed to appease patronising, ignorant boomers who think "they have it to easy" rather than create a scheme or schemes that would actually boost volunteering in useful ways, provide skills, and fit into the lives of younger generations.
Has there been an election where the two main party leaders are so bad ( dull) at public speaking? Oh for the days of Thatcher against Kinnock or even Blair and Hague
Count Binface vs Farage is our future. We're still winning compared to the USA I guess.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Because these people are adults. Many of whom have responsibilities and aspirations that aren't best served by the government telling them what they have to do for 25 days a year - and it's not education, it's forced labour. You don't get a useful qualification (unless you're planning to join a related service - in which case you might volunteer for a voluntary scheme) at the end of it.
If for, example, you study full-time at college but need to work weekends to help pay your way at home or the rent, then it's a massive inconvenience. If you're caring for a parent, brother or sister, or your own child it is too. Or volunteer for valuable things that don't qualify or are looking to do to further your professional skills in a specific area.
It's also an insult because younger generations have been made poorer and had rights taken away by their elders, who now want to make their lives even harder because of their creepy World War 2 fetish and failure to come to terms with how feckless and selfish they have been themselves.
Seeing as you're not against forcing into work that makes their lives harder but provides an education and sense of community. How about we do National Service but for pensioners who own their own home? They can work the second jobs many young people have to to afford rent in such the inflated property market they benefited from.
Oh. Thought not.
Oh please. If we need to create an exemption system for those caring for a relative or doing other, genuine volunteer work, then we can make that part of a scheme. I bet it is less than 2% of the 18 year old population.
And the reason why it makes sense to do it for this group is because the primary benefit of doing it is equipping people for the lives ahead of them. Therefore it makes sense to do it with people entering the workforce, not those who have left it. Too many British people lack a real work ethic or sense of service and I am glad Sunak is a politician actually willing to do something about it.
As for house and rental prices, that is overwhelmingly driven by the population growing far more quickly than construction can keep up. The best approach to that is to limit immigration to those who contribute more than they cost the system. The only PM that has actually done anything about that is Sunak, with meaningful income thresholds and limits on student dependents.
Forced labour for others but absolutely not for you. Of course!
Anyone for what's next? Taxi drivers to wear ties looks feasible.
Vibe: Fuck cyclists Policy: Illegal for cyclists (and pedestrians) to use the carriageway when a segregated cycle lane(pavement) is available, require insurance, compulsory helmets, some sort of registration scheme, speed limit of 15mph
Vibe: Death death death Policy: Death penalty for anyone who defrauds a pensioner, sex offenders
Vibe: Death death death Policy: Ban the RNLI from operating in the Channel
Vibe: Transphobia Policy: Restrict Trans people from working in hospitals, schools with gender mixing and so on
Vibe: Old people Policy: Free broadband - the modern equivalent of free TV license
Vibe: Old people Policy: Free VED - the modern version of free bus pass
Has there been an election where the two main party leaders are so bad ( dull) at public speaking? Oh for the days of Thatcher against Kinnock or even Blair and Hague
Public speaking is last millennium.
Spouting crap on social media is what politicians do now.
Paul Johnson @PJTheEconomist · 31m About half the cost of this is just not imposing the planned tax increase (via 3 more years of freezing allowances) on pensioners. So the £100 "saving" next year is mostly just avoiding a £100 tax increase, rather than an actual giveaway.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Because these people are adults. Many of whom have responsibilities and aspirations that aren't best served by the government telling them what they have to do for 25 days a year - and it's not education, it's forced labour. You don't get a useful qualification (unless you're planning to join a related service - in which case you might volunteer for a voluntary scheme) at the end of it.
If for, example, you study full-time at college but need to work weekends to help pay your way at home or the rent, then it's a massive inconvenience. If you're caring for a parent, brother or sister, or your own child it is too. Or volunteer for valuable things that don't qualify or are looking to do to further your professional skills in a specific area.
It's also an insult because younger generations have been made poorer and had rights taken away by their elders, who now want to make their lives even harder because of their creepy World War 2 fetish and failure to come to terms with how feckless and selfish they have been themselves.
Seeing as you're not against forcing into work that makes their lives harder but provides an education and sense of community. How about we do National Service but for pensioners who own their own home? They can work the second jobs many young people have to to afford rent in such the inflated property market they benefited from.
Oh. Thought not.
Oh please. If we need to create an exemption system for those caring for a relative or doing other, genuine volunteer work, then we can make that part of a scheme. I bet it is less than 2% of the 18 year old population.
And the reason why it makes sense to do it for this group is because the primary benefit of doing it is equipping people for the lives ahead of them. Therefore it makes sense to do it with people entering the workforce, not those who have left it. Too many British people lack a real work ethic or sense of service and I am glad Sunak is a politician actually willing to do something about it.
As for house and rental prices, that is overwhelmingly driven by the population growing far more quickly than construction can keep up. The best approach to that is to limit immigration to those who contribute more than they cost the system. The only PM that has actually done anything about that is Sunak, with meaningful income thresholds and limits on student dependents.
Equip them in the vital skill of fruit picking? Teach them the ethic that work doesn't pay and you have no control?
Surely the first step is to decide what skills they should acquire by their compulsory volunteering, and how on earth it stimulates a work ethic.
Don't conscript them first then wonder what you are going to do with them. That will just teach them to skive off.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Education is mandatory for children until 18, yes.
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
One of the maddening things is that there are the germs of a couple of maybe decent (but not cheap) ideas here.
One is a widely-available, competitive but easy application process Public Service Internship, a year between school/college and university/employment/apprenticeship. No reason why it just has to be military.
The other is making helping out in the community a natural part of the compulsory education experience. Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, International Baccalaureate... they've all got it. Schools and colleges just need a smallish amount of cash and a larger amount of staff time, and Rishi claimed to be hoping to reform post-16 education anyway. It would have fitted in there pretty well without too much need to reinvent the wheel. (Couple of conditions I would put on this- it should fit within the school/college timetable and the main reward participants should get is the learning, and the projects should be nice-to-haves, not core functions of government. That's where the Sunak Grand Design stuffed up.)
But it's all got lost due to Rishi's unwillingness to spend money (given a chance, he would have axed NCS altogether) and the Conservative obsession with fluffing boomers with phrases like National Service. And that looks like it's discredited the whole thing.
There's been nothing to stop Labour formulating a more realistic proposal.
In 1945, 1964, 1997 Labour came to power with ideas on how to modernise and reform the country.
Whereas now Labour offer nothing but being a repository of votes for getting rid of the Conservatives and SNP.
Not inflicting forced labour on 18 year-olds seems a pretty realistic alternative to me.
The @ukonward report you have linked to advocates what amounts to a voluntary mass Duke of Edinburgh award, nothing like the mandatory nonsense being proposed by Sunak. In fact @ukonward spells out quite clearly why Sunak’s scheme won’t work!
The problem with it is definitely the mandatory bit - which is why it's such madness clearly cooked up so they can tell elderly reactionaries they're bringing back 'National Service'.
Plus, the army bit is obviously not wanted by the army itself, as they don't want to babysit 30,000 18-year-olds over proper recruitment and kitting out.
A mass boost to youth volunteering - pretty popular, even among the young. So long as it's optional.
Once you make it mandatory you create huge questions of sanctions, policing, safeguarding, training, and funding. None of which exist if you're launching a scheme designed to give people an incentive to volunteer rather than telling 18-year-olds what to do with their weekends. When many will already be working very hard to either pay for their education, care for families etc. Or already doing something valuable with their free time.
Sublimely out-of-touch with ordinary young people's lives today.
School is mandatory. Why is it such a problem that another part of young people's education is mandatory? This isn't out of touchness. This is the pathetic British mindset of being against all change, especially change that demands more responsibility for people.
Education is mandatory for children until 18, yes.
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
One of the maddening things is that there are the germs of a couple of maybe decent (but not cheap) ideas here.
One is a widely-available, competitive but easy application process Public Service Internship, a year between school/college and university/employment/apprenticeship. No reason why it just has to be military.
The other is making helping out in the community a natural part of the compulsory education experience. Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, International Baccalaureate... they've all got it. Schools and colleges just need a smallish amount of cash and a larger amount of staff time, and Rishi claimed to be hoping to reform post-16 education anyway. It would have fitted in there pretty well without too much need to reinvent the wheel. (Couple of conditions I would put on this- it should fit within the school/college timetable and the main reward participants should get is the learning, and the projects should be nice-to-haves, not core functions of government. That's where the Sunak Grand Design stuffed up.)
But it's all got lost due to Rishi's unwillingness to spend money (given a chance, he would have axed NCS altogether) and the Conservative obsession with fluffing boomers with phrases like National Service. And that looks like it's discredited the whole thing.
I don't think Boomers are the target. I remember 'reintroduce National Service' as a background noise to the 1980s that I grew up in - not a proposal anyone took seriously, but one which had a certain emotional pull for some of those who had experienced NS. But National Service was abolished in, what, 1960? Meaning the only people who experienced it are those over the age of 80. That isn't Boomers.
The state pension does of course count as taxable income, but it is never taxed directly. So, for example, when my state pension rises, my work pension automatically reduces as it is taxed more.
The dilemma is for those who have absolutely no income other than the state pension. If this rises above the personal allowance, a few million poorer pensioners would have to pay tax on the surplus amount - it would likely be a very small amount, and would no doubt cost more to collect (through self-assessment if the DWP won't tax the pension at source - good luck with that) than it would raise. So it would make some sense to tie the state pension to the personal allowance.
If we want to collect more tax from wealthier pensioners, there are much easier ways to do it. Having different personal allowances for pensioners and workers is palpably absurd.
Yes but. How does that argument differ from someone working earning £13k? It would be an equally small amount.
Well, I don't think somebody earning £13k should be taxed at all. But the point I was trying to make, possibly clumsily, is that there's no current mechanism for collecting tax from a pensioner receiving nothing but the state pension, whereas PAYE for the low-paid worker is cheap and easy. Like everything though, I don't think the Tories have thought it through.
I don't think we're really disagreeing. My view is that pensioners who can afford it should be taxed more, as should workers who can afford it. By contrast, poor pensioners and poor workers should not be taxed until they cease to be poor. (Sorry, reply to DD).
See. The danger I worry about is that this is going to turn into blind fury against the older generation. Jibes about bone idleness from folk who haven't worked in 25 years are contributing. And to demand "punishment". They may end up a lot worse off than they'd imagined.
Well, the Tory campaign seems to be built entirely on constant restatement of the contention that Starmer has no plan.
Which might work if it wasn’t wholly evident from the last 8 years that the Tories haven’t had one either.
If this is the best they can do, then the wipeout may yet be on.
Ironically it's followed up with clear Tory plan. What that is I can't discern.
Fuck anyone working for a living, look after pensioners.
And block construction so that house prices remain high.
Jeez. You seem more annoyed about this than I am! Relax. They're digging their own grave.
Hunt in cutting NI had correctly identified what is wrong with our tax system and was starting to fix it, but I didn't trust Sunak since his instinct was the opposite.
This campaign has Sunak all over it. Its absolutely awful. Hunt seems to have been sidelined completely.
The Conservatives made a mistake in not electing Hunt leader in 2022.
Perhaps they should have inverted the nominations process, and let the membership decide between Javid, Shapps, and Chisti. They'd likely be in a far better position today, no matter which of them won.
Vibe: Old people Policy: Free broadband - the modern equivalent of free TV license
No.
This was discussed previously.
Not only does the free TV license remain, a Royal Commission will determine whether TV returns to 4 channels, or only 3, with big buttons to select each one.
The state pension does of course count as taxable income, but it is never taxed directly. So, for example, when my state pension rises, my work pension automatically reduces as it is taxed more.
The dilemma is for those who have absolutely no income other than the state pension. If this rises above the personal allowance, a few million poorer pensioners would have to pay tax on the surplus amount - it would likely be a very small amount, and would no doubt cost more to collect (through self-assessment if the DWP won't tax the pension at source - good luck with that) than it would raise. So it would make some sense to tie the state pension to the personal allowance.
If we want to collect more tax from wealthier pensioners, there are much easier ways to do it. Having different personal allowances for pensioners and workers is palpably absurd.
Yes but. How does that argument differ from someone working earning £13k? It would be an equally small amount.
Well, I don't think somebody earning £13k should be taxed at all. But the point I was trying to make, possibly clumsily, is that there's no current mechanism for collecting tax from a pensioner receiving nothing but the state pension, whereas PAYE for the low-paid worker is cheap and easy. Like everything though, I don't think the Tories have thought it through.
Setting up such a mechanism? There was no mechanism for checking whether or not UC claimants had £6k in savings either. Demanding access to their bank accounts was put on Statute stat.
But... they were young. Some of them were trying to work and better their lives. I mean, WTF? That's not what the current tory party is about.
I do think some journalists are in danger of getting carried away. I imagine parties focus group the impact of most announcements, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything that Sunak wants to gauge what voters really thought of it.
Typically they focus group announcements before they make them. It is atypical to ask "How badly did I fuck that up?"
I would expect that they would focus group either side or an announcement as a matter of course. It would seem insensible to ask people what they think about something you might do but not check that it is what they actually think when you go ahead and do it. I think Mr Coates is letting the narrative interpret the facts rather than developing a narrative from out of the facts.
See. The danger I worry about is that this is going to turn into blind fury against the older generation. Jibes about bone idleness from folk who haven't worked in 25 years are contributing. And to demand "punishment". They may end up a lot worse off than they'd imagined.
I already see it amongst the 'alt-right-curious' on Discord forums etc. The mild jibes of "ok, boomer" are becoming way, way more pointed.
Comments
What is proposed is mandatory for adults so not a part of their education. And ignores the fact that many such adults have other responsibilities already at weekends, like jobs for example.
If you want to adjust the mandatory education system then that's reasonable - for children under 18 and in hours that are reasonably for education, not for adults in hours they might have a job.
Just push up the personal allowance for everyone to allow them to have their earnings or pension some respite from inflation
Personal allowance should be minimum £15,000pa preferably £20,000pa
And if the bottom of the NI threshold is pushed up with the personal allowance then workers still benefit more!
👍
Different income tax personal allowances depending upon your age? Additional & unnecessary tax complexity which we sensibly scrapped in 2012.
NEW: The Conservatives would upgrade the Triple Lock for pensioners with an extra income tax cut.
The new 'Triple Lock Plus' would raise pensioners' tax-free allowance each year.
National service for the young, tax cuts for the old. Big difference in the generational offering!
What that is I can't discern.
Pot-smoking and fights at a northern training camp have raised fresh doubts about President Macron’s plans to make France’s three-year-old national service scheme compulsory for teenagers
And block construction so that house prices remain high.
Suggests this might not be a stinker, but as ever time will tell
- Sacrifice the young
- Reward the old
- Punish the harmless
- Appease the dangerous
I think this explains increasing authoritarianismEXC: Labour leader Keir Starmer writes exclusively in tomorrow’s
@Daily_Record
https://x.com/paulhutcheon/status/1795207199792230640
It might be popular, but if so its a popular stinker.
Paul Brand
@PaulBrandITV
·
6m
NEW: The Conservatives would upgrade the Triple Lock for pensioners with an extra income tax cut.
The new 'Triple Lock Plus' would raise pensioners' tax-free allowance each year.
National service for the young, tax cuts for the old. Big difference in the generational offering!
https://x.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1795205841068454393
I would pile up a bunch of newspapers and go back to 1997. I'd track down Carol Vorderman and let her loose on all the shit that's happened. Give her a fast track to her anti-Tory radicalisation.
I'd then get rich winning the national lottery ten times in a row.
I'd then fly to New York and spend the next four years getting to know Donald Trump, before inviting him to a breakfast meeting on a crisp, early fall Tuesday morning. Somewhere with a view. I wouldn't show up.
Good night all.
If you're interested in being informed, the triggernometry interview is good on this - the second section 'does voting matter' deals with Truss's experiences as a Minister.
https://youtu.be/jqN-B4DVUww?si=5pZo7kNG8AiFTbMF
I am challenging @RishiSunak to a live TV debate on immigration.
If he refuses, that will confirm the fact that he can’t stop the boats.
@CountBinface
I am challenging @Nigel_Farage to a live TV debate on the benefits of Brexit.
If he refuses, it will confirm the fact that he sent Britain up shit creek without a paddle.
Downing Street said its proposals would mean eight million pensioners would save £100 in tax from next year
Telegraph
Here is an example of a string-em-up in 1823:
https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/historypastandpresent/2016/01/15/the-execution-of-benjamin-candler-valet-to-the-duke-of-newcastle-1823/
(And, strictly, the policy after 1835 was only by discretion. The death penalty remained on the books till 1861, so the risk was there that some Victorian equivalent of our Tories would go all woke hunt and reimpose it ...)
PS Some did get prison sentences in the UK anyway. Would need to check the details though.
PM Rishi Sunak consulted a focus group to gauge what the public thought about his 4 July general election announcement.
@SamCoatesSky
says this could indicate his campaign team are "worried".
https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1795207708724871259
However, some people under 18 have weekend or full time jobs, care for family members and so on. An example I made earlier were the farmers in my class who would often work for 3 hours before school. So the adult/child distinction is blurred.
And I have no fundamental issue with it being compulsory. Consider jury service.
The difference is that it's another burden on young people, particularly those from the poorest backgrounds. They and their families often rely on their incomes - unless the child element of benefits like UC will be extended to children not in full time education?
It's also part of the dangerous creep towards a reliance on volunteering to provide essential public services like social care. Furthermore, it's been suggested as a way to subvert labour markets by providing free labour to sectors such as agriculture.
It's an unusual policy in that people from all schools of political thought can find something wrong with it.
Relax. They're digging their own grave.
Now I hope the dregs that purport to represent that brand are swept away with old testament ferocity.
I don't think I've changed all that much in my own politics, though.
But, as I keep saying, if you're young, northern and working class things have never been better.
Pretty good for many others as well - I'm included here and I'm sure many other PBers as well (though few will admit it).
I'd certainly take the current situation compared with what we had in 2008-2010.
Now for many its not good but that's the way of the world - sometimes one socioeconomic demographic does well, sometimes it doesn't and another does.
And usually its a pattern happening also in similar countries irrespective of what governments do.
The most marginal seat last time was Fermanagh and South Tyrone at 57 votes, and it has been even more marginal in the past. But you'd probably need a NI expert, and know whether the unionist parties will cooperate as they sometimes do there.
Most other marginals last time probably won't be this time - I believe in 2017 the most marginal was Fife NE by 2 votes, which the LDs held by 1300 in 2019. Which is pretty marginal in most places but Scotland has a lot of close races.
https://youtu.be/8ilDMHpI8_c?si=SQ4TkuajrsN9CTTM
The dilemma is for those who have absolutely no income other than the state pension. If this rises above the personal allowance, a few million poorer pensioners would have to pay tax on the surplus amount - it would likely be a very small amount, and would no doubt cost more to collect (through self-assessment if the DWP won't tax the pension at source - good luck with that) than it would raise. So it would make some sense to tie the state pension to the personal allowance.
If we want to collect more tax from wealthier pensioners, there are much easier ways to do it. Having different personal allowances for pensioners and workers is palpably absurd.
One is a widely-available, competitive but easy application process Public Service Internship, a year between school/college and university/employment/apprenticeship. No reason why it just has to be military.
The other is making helping out in the community a natural part of the compulsory education experience. Duke of Edinburgh, NCS, International Baccalaureate... they've all got it. Schools and colleges just need a smallish amount of cash and a larger amount of staff time, and Rishi claimed to be hoping to reform post-16 education anyway. It would have fitted in there pretty well without too much need to reinvent the wheel. (Couple of conditions I would put on this- it should fit within the school/college timetable and the main reward participants should get is the learning, and the projects should be nice-to-haves, not core functions of government. That's where the Sunak Grand Design stuffed up.)
But it's all got lost due to Rishi's unwillingness to spend money (given a chance, he would have axed NCS altogether) and the Conservative obsession with fluffing boomers with phrases like National Service. And that looks like it's discredited the whole thing.
And the reason why it makes sense to do it for this group is because the primary benefit of doing it is equipping people for the lives ahead of them. Therefore it makes sense to do it with people entering the workforce, not those who have left it. Too many British people lack a real work ethic or sense of service and I am glad Sunak is a politician actually willing to do something about it.
As for house and rental prices, that is overwhelmingly driven by the population growing far more quickly than construction can keep up. The best approach to that is to limit immigration to those who contribute more than they cost the system. The only PM that has actually done anything about that is Sunak, with meaningful income thresholds and limits on student dependents.
UK politics will offer ageing boomers literally anything EXCEPT a functioning NHS and properly funded social care, ie the things that actually keep them alive.
quadruple lock on pensions, take your estate out of inheritance tax, no to wealth taxes, bring back blue passports/national service/imperial measures? Absolutely! Waiting less than 24 hours in A&E for a bed, in your 80s? Sorry no can do.
This campaign has Sunak all over it. Its absolutely awful. Hunt seems to have been sidelined completely.
Sunak is too stupid to realise his seat is also in jeopardy.
How does that argument differ from someone working earning £13k? It would be an equally small amount.
@ftukpolitics
Sunak unveils £2.4bn pensioner tax cut in bid to stabilise election campaign
I now have a mental image of a sinking hot air balloon with Richi desperately jettisoning anything he can grab to stop it crashing.
It's not working...
Case in point (not that this is a good idea per se, but it sounds good to appeal to Pensioners)
Going for working people would also require a massive pivot to the centre or left. That's impossible now.
I have nothing in particular to pro-or-anti her policies. But really, she was rubbish.
Once, Cameron said the Tories were the party of the workers. Sunak is now positioning them as party of the pensioners.
This is consistent with a core vote strategy aiming for ~200 seats by making Tories party of the elderly.
As I said before, to get my Baccalaureate I had to do 150 hours of CAS. 50 hours each of [C]reativity, [A]ction and [S]ervice. Which I could choose to do on my own or my school could support and give opportunities towards. Which could be done at hours of my choosing, not proscribed weekends.
Reform the education system to include something like that, great! Giving young people a well rounded education? Fantastic.
But telling adults they must do certain stuff at weekends when they have other responsibilities already, like jobs? Stupid, stupid, stupid, ignorant idea.
But then Rishi probably never relied upon a weekend job to pay the bills when he was 18 and he seems completely out of touch with anyone who does.
I am a socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral.
Maiden speech, House of Commons, July 6 1983
Like everything though, I don't think the Tories have thought it through.
Taxi drivers to wear ties looks feasible.
Nailed on now...
In 1945, 1964, 1997 Labour came to power with ideas on how to modernise and reform the country.
Whereas now Labour offer nothing but being a repository of votes for getting rid of the Conservatives and SNP.
Also, I didn't say I would be killing anyone. Mere inviting someone to admire a clear, blue, sunny morning in September and standing them up wouldn't normally result in their demise. And if -- somehow -- it did, that's not really my doing now, is it?
Oh do sod off you insulting fool. What a great example of the deluded madness of the selfish generation. Younger people are working harder than ever - for worse equivalent pay. I bet they work harder and have a stronger sense of service than you do to your fellow citizens and the way you have voted for things that have made their lives worse.
People like you could certainly do with National Service far more than the young, as you are so selfish and ignorant of others' lives that you need it far more than they do.
There was no mechanism for checking whether or not UC claimants had £6k in savings either.
Demanding access to their bank accounts was put on Statute stat.
Consider the list of MPs in order of seniority;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_MPs_by_seniority_(2019–2024)
There aren't many vetrans of 1997 and 2001 left on the Conservative benches, and even fewer are in any sort of senior role. (There's Andrew Mitchell, but at a glance, I can't see any others.) The class of 2005 gives you Shapps, Davies the Welsh and Gove, but the Conservatives were on the up by them.
How many of them have the experience needed to develop the inner fortitude to keep smiling as the ship sinks beneath the waves?
We're about to find out, but the omens aren't good.
What's he going to do, trudge back to Charles and say there's been a terrible mistake?
Policy: Illegal for cyclists (and pedestrians) to use the carriageway when a segregated cycle lane(pavement) is available, require insurance, compulsory helmets, some sort of registration scheme, speed limit of 15mph
Vibe: Death death death
Policy: Death penalty for anyone who defrauds a pensioner, sex offenders
Vibe: Death death death
Policy: Ban the RNLI from operating in the Channel
Vibe: Transphobia
Policy: Restrict Trans people from working in hospitals, schools with gender mixing and so on
Vibe: Old people
Policy: Free broadband - the modern equivalent of free TV license
Vibe: Old people
Policy: Free VED - the modern version of free bus pass
Spouting crap on social media is what politicians do now.
Paul Johnson
@PJTheEconomist
·
31m
About half the cost of this is just not imposing the planned tax increase (via 3 more years of freezing allowances) on pensioners. So the £100 "saving" next year is mostly just avoiding a £100 tax increase, rather than an actual giveaway.
Don't conscript them first then wonder what you are going to do with them. That will just teach them to skive off.
But National Service was abolished in, what, 1960? Meaning the only people who experienced it are those over the age of 80. That isn't Boomers.
(Sorry, reply to DD).
And to demand "punishment". They may end up a lot worse off than they'd imagined.
This was discussed previously.
Not only does the free TV license remain, a Royal Commission will determine whether TV returns to 4 channels, or only 3, with big buttons to select each one.