Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
As I predicted Sky have now expanded the conservative tax controversy to Labours misleading assertions on the conservatives plans for NI calling them dodgy dossiers
The fun is this has kicked off the debate on the economy. The more Labour protest the more they will be asked to set out what there plans are, something they have avoided to date. Sunak has little to lose in this as he's already on the rack Starmer might actually have to face some scrutiny now.
No. This only works like 1992, one party is going to raise your tax, they other won’t. If it cancels each other out it leaves Labours 20% lead un scratched.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
Indeed, and small business owners have almost no political voice - mostly because they spend all of their time running their businesses.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
No it doesn't - it's just that the headline salary of £30,000 isn't the actual cost of employing someone it's £34,000 or so.
I really don't see how it makes it a harder decision, anyone in business will know that the true cost of hiring someone is way more than the headline advertised salary...
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
They could also just actually fine large companies that are breaking multiple laws. That would be an enormous windfall tax on utility companies that would be much more difficult for them to whinge about.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
Indeed, and small business owners have almost no political voice - mostly because they spend all of their time running their businesses.
Yes. This is the tricky thing. When you are really small business a lot of the work day is either directly swapping money for time or out there wheeling / dealing for the new business / firefighting to keep the business running.
Large businesses, there is no direct operations. Its strategy, including lobbying governments (directly / indirectly).
Richard Tice was interviewed by Andrew Neil on Times Radio saying that the target for Reform is millions and millions of votes. UKIP got 3,881,099 votes in GE15, does anyone think that Reform UK will beat that in GE24?
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
I'm sorry it's just the cost of employing someone - Employer NI just means that the headline figure being advertised isn't the true cost of employing them...
All things being equal, increasing employers NI should increase the incentive to invest in technology to increase productivity, by making labour more expensive.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
As I predicted Sky have now expanded the conservative tax controversy to Labours misleading assertions on the conservatives plans for NI calling them dodgy dossiers
The fun is this has kicked off the debate on the economy. The more Labour protest the more they will be asked to set out what there plans are, something they have avoided to date. Sunak has little to lose in this as he's already on the rack Starmer might actually have to face some scrutiny now.
No. This only works like 1992, one party is going to raise your tax, they other won’t. If it cancels each other out it leaves Labours 20% lead un scratched.
Yes, and the more they have score draw rows over tax the more people are thinking about tax. About how much tax people are having to pay these days. Which doesn't much help the Tories.
Starmer’s team aggressively fighting back now & calling Sunak a liar over claims he made about small boats
Seems they are in real panic mode
Calling out a liar is not panic.
Do you agree that Sunak is a liar?
He is a politician and I doubt he will back down on the substantive claim
Question. “Do you agree that Sunak is a liar? ‘
Answer. “ He is a politician and I doubt he will back down on the substantive claim.”
That is a great answer 🙂
He has merely presented a truth which is why Labour supporters are getting so upset, ergo that Labour loves to raise tax, and raise it they will. If anyone really believes that Labour will find efficiencies in the system (guffaw) to meet their spending wetdreams, then I have a bridge to sell you.
You are not supposed to be caught out simply making up and lying about your opponents plans though. That’s just rank bad politics. 🙂
Which brings me to the presenters stupid stunt. They can both easily rule out top rates moving, rishi has proven you can bring in billions through fiscal drag and other stealth taxes, and keep the election promise of “not a penny more on”. Not that the Tories kept that promise not a penny more on. Sunak invented a whole new NI half way through parliament to stop NHS properly collapsing.
What you are missing Nigel is all those headlines about the highest tax take since the war. Both parties know they can make these promises not to raise tax as the system will be taking massively from us anyway, throughout the next parliament.
What I think you both miss is the number of factors that go into deciding which way you vote (or anything else for that matter) The best thing I read from an advertising guru was that people build opinions like birds build nests. Lots of small things put together over a period of time and after they're in place they are extremely difficult to shift. So if a newspaper prints a series of stories which contradicts your thinking you're far mire likely to change your paper than your mind
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
I'm sorry it's just the cost of employing someone - Employer NI just means that the headline figure being advertised isn't the true cost of employing them...
All things being equal, increasing employers NI should increase the incentive to invest in technology to increase productivity, by making labour more expensive.
That's what we all want isn't it?
Yes, but there needs to be a lot more carrot and a lot less stick.
If this thread is going to cross 2000 replies, hurrah!
Friday night is Farage night it would seem - that might get some more viewers than last night's performance.
As others have said, mid to late June presents an embarrassment of riches for those seeking entertainment - Ascot, Glastonbury, Euro 2024, the General Election, decorating a spare bedroom to name but five.
That's why we've not had a GE in an even number year since 1992 (and that was in April). 1970 was the last "summer" election in an even numbered year - that didn't end well for a Government defending a large majority (in seats if not votes).
I think it could have been box office – as Farage, Angela and Penny are all entertaining figures. Sadly some quarterwit at the Beeb didn't even manage the most basic check of TV schedules. Had they done so, they would have spotted that both England AND Scotland are playing football at exactly the same time.
Amateurish scheduling, a real shame.
If only the technology existed to allow people to watch the debate at some later time of their choosing!
Well I'll record it, but a big part of the fun of live TV is the instant responses on social media etc.
Corbyn said he had not been tempted to join with George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain – which is seeking to mount a challenge to Labour on the left and on the issue of Gaza – saying there were differences of social policy. “He probably thinks I’m too woke,” he added.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
Sorry but with Making Tax Digital and the fact that most banks now have apps that allow you to tag payments in seconds I do not see a quarterly VAT return as that complex especially as flat rate turnover based options are available.
And removing the £90,000 barrier by making it completely unavoidsable would provide a lot of companies with an incentive to work a bit harder rather than stopping as their turnover hits £7,000 for the month...
If you thought the Tory dossier was dodgy….read on….
🧵 Here's my primer on that £2k "Labour tax bombshell" @rishisunak was going on abt. Warning: this is far more convoluted/bizarre/intriguing than u might have expected. & neither Lab nor Con come out of it v well. But let's begin with a proviso: WE DON'T HAVE THE MANIFESTOS YET!
The problem for Labour is the circle of ultra low, Tory taxation (since the autumn statement last year) cannot be squared with improved public services. Rishi on the other hand can explain away low taxes (since last year) because he is not obliged to improve public services. In reality he would be quite content to return to Osborne austerity.
Labour are thus lying, the Conservatives are not. Mind you I quite like well funded public services so I won't be voting Conservative.
Corbyn said he had not been tempted to join with George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain – which is seeking to mount a challenge to Labour on the left and on the issue of Gaza – saying there were differences of social policy. “He probably thinks I’m too woke,” he added.
People front of Judea vs the Judean People's Front....
Corbyn said he had not been tempted to join with George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain – which is seeking to mount a challenge to Labour on the left and on the issue of Gaza – saying there were differences of social policy. “He probably thinks I’m too woke,” he added.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
It really is quite funny how the line from the Sunak loyalists has changed over the last 24 hours.
Last night: "Ha ha! Sunak has really won the debate and nailed Starmer with the £2000 tax thing!"
Today: "Oh really all this talk about whether Sunak was lying is a distraction from the real issues."
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
It really is quite funny how the line from the Sunak loyalists has changed over the last 24 hours.
Last night: "Ha ha! Sunak has really won the debate and nailed Starmer with the £2000 tax thing!"
Today: "Oh really all this talk about whether Sunak was lying is a distraction from the real issues."
Well i didn't say that....i didn't watch the debate, so made no comment on who won / lost, only i thought Starmers point blank refusal to ever use private healthcare.
My line has been rather consistent on this for ages, all the way back to Truss being wrong as looking at it from wrong end of the telescope, Sunak was wrong about NI++ scheme etc. the key problem the UK has is productivity.
Way offtopic, an interesting story coming out of the US, a potential conglomerate looking to base a stock exchange in Taxes, following on from dozens of companies relocating there from NY and CA in the past few years.
A new group called The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) is set to start a new national stock exchange to challenge the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
A spokesperson for Citadel Securities, one of the companies backing the effort with BlackRock, told the Wall Street Journal that the group has raised about $120 million and plans to file registration documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later this year.
The TXSE is planning to begin in 2025 and host its first listing in 2026. The exchange is looking to compete for primary and dual listings of exchange-traded products.
The group is aiming to capitalize on disaffection in the market regarding increasing compliance costs at Nasdaq and NYSE, and newer regulations including those that set diversity targets for boards of Nasdaq companies. Some have called the new alternative an “anti-woke” exchange.
According to The Journal, dozens of companies are moving to states with more favorable regulatory and taxation policies, which has made Texas home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.
In years past there had been dozens of regional stock exchanges outside of New York, but most were shut down or acquired. The Boston Stock Exchange, the Chicago Stock Exchange, and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange were folded into the NYSE and Nasdaq in the past two decades.
That is absurd. I have met Holden and he is a capable politician but that is totally undemocratic.
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
He was a great constituency MP (mine).
Then his seat was abolished for this election and he almost immediately gave up entirely. Showing he has no sense of duty; he was only ever doing it out of political cynicism.
Unimpressed to put it mildly.
He is also taking a risk, the Basildon part of the Basildon and Billericay seat was Labour in the Blair years and Teresa Gorman only held Billericay narrowly in 1997.
Labour could win it on current polls, especially if a big Reform vote and LD tactical voting. The only truly safe seats in Essex at the moment even on a worst case scenario are Maldon, Rayleigh and Wickford, Witham and Brentwood and Ongar (and probably Essex NW and Epping Forest)
I always think back to the hapless Iain Sproat, who chicken ran from Aberdeen South to Roxburgh & Berwickshire in 1983... only for the former to be narrowly held by the Tories and the latter lost.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
They would be stupid, and if they refused it on behalf of their family a selfish opinionated prick.
What do you think of the medical staff that facilitate it, whilst simultaneously telling the world they are overworked and underpaid (guffaw)?
A gentle reminder that any given Muslim is far, far more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than to perpetrate one.
The deliberate insinuation that Muslims are all bad is gross bigotry, yet oddly tolerated in certain circles.
Where would we be without painfully meaningless, boring left platitudes designed to avoid the fucking obvious? Congrats on getting yours in so quick
Well, we'd probably live in a fascist hellscape created by people like you.
Serious question. What do you think happens to a liberal society if you import millions of illiberal people, and it turns out they don’t assimilate, and instead they persist in those values?
I can tell you. What you get is an increasingly less liberal society. More hostile to Jews and gays, and - in the end - not great for women. And that is exactly what we are seeing
Which part of this do you still dispute?
If anyone is prepared to admit to being Jewish I can recommend the funniest book ever written and much more interesting and informative than the sterile racist bilge Leon pumps out daily.
Does it have a chapter called never take chewing gum from a mohel ?
I've got some good mohel jokes if you like but it's not a joke book!
Guy goes into a shop and says 'can I have a pound of potatoes please''
'I'm sorry but I don't sell potatoes'
'Well why have you got them in your window!'
''I'm a mohel. What do you want me to have in my window?'
Is your source "The Joys of Yiddish" (1968) by Leo Rosten?
Was one of my favorite books back in my misspent youth. For what it's worth (2-cents or less) yours truly is not Jewish, nor did I live in a community where Yiddish was heard frequently; indeed, wasn't heard at all. In my humble school we had exactly one Jewish kid, and doubt that she was fluent in anything but (American) English.
TJOY is a great book, and while somewhat dated (hardly surprising after nearly six decades) it remains a treasure trove of Jewish (specifically Ashkenazi) culture AND the early 20th century American immigrant experience.
@tomorrowsmps 🔵 I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates' list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere. https://x.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1798335719645335579
Are you standing?
No, not on the approved list
That vote for Plaid Cymru has come back to bite you.
Corbyn said he had not been tempted to join with George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain – which is seeking to mount a challenge to Labour on the left and on the issue of Gaza – saying there were differences of social policy. “He probably thinks I’m too woke,” he added.
Galloway probably thinks that Corbyn's views on the Jews are too woke.
I was a Tory member for a very short time, but they still send me emails even though I haven't been one for quite a while. Don't know whether this is deliberate or not.
Just got this from Richard Holden:
"I'm just following up on Rishi's email to you below by bringing you the BREAKING NEWS that, according to a snap poll, Rishi Sunak beat Sir Keir Starmer among people who watched the debate.
How did we know this was going to happen? Because only Rishi Sunak has the track record of delivery, and the bold ideas needed for a brighter future.
And it's a lot easier to stand up your ideas when you actually have a plan.
If you missed the debate you can see the best bits here >>>
Thank you to the thousands of you who shared our content at home, and who've chipped in £10, £5, even £1 during the course of the campaign.
Trust me when I say that everything you do really does make a difference.
Together, we're going to keep Sir Keir Starmer out of 10 Downing Street. And deliver the bold action needed for a brighter future.
Yours sincerely, Richard Holden Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party""
Is it kosher, to refer to him as Chief CUP-Holder Holden?
That is absurd. I have met Holden and he is a capable politician but that is totally undemocratic.
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
He was a great constituency MP (mine).
Then his seat was abolished for this election and he almost immediately gave up entirely. Showing he has no sense of duty; he was only ever doing it out of political cynicism.
Unimpressed to put it mildly.
He is also taking a risk, the Basildon part of the Basildon and Billericay seat was Labour in the Blair years and Teresa Gorman only held Billericay narrowly in 1997.
Labour could win it on current polls, especially if a big Reform vote and LD tactical voting. The only truly safe seats in Essex at the moment even on a worst case scenario are Maldon, Rayleigh and Wickford, Witham and Brentwood and Ongar (and probably Essex NW and Epping Forest)
I always think back to the hapless Iain Sproat, who chicken ran from Aberdeen South to Roxburgh & Berwickshire in 1983... only for the former to be narrowly held by the Tories and the latter lost.
It was always a silly decision by Sproat because at that election it was the Alliance who were going up in support and Labour going down, and Roxburgh was a top Alliance target whereas Aberdeen South was a Con/Lab marginal.
That is absurd. I have met Holden and he is a capable politician but that is totally undemocratic.
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
He was a great constituency MP (mine).
Then his seat was abolished for this election and he almost immediately gave up entirely. Showing he has no sense of duty; he was only ever doing it out of political cynicism.
Unimpressed to put it mildly.
He is also taking a risk, the Basildon part of the Basildon and Billericay seat was Labour in the Blair years and Teresa Gorman only held Billericay narrowly in 1997.
Labour could win it on current polls, especially if a big Reform vote and LD tactical voting. The only truly safe seats in Essex at the moment even on a worst case scenario are Maldon, Rayleigh and Wickford, Witham and Brentwood and Ongar (and probably Essex NW and Epping Forest)
Survation's MRP yesterday had Rayleigh & Wickford going to Labour, astonishingly.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
Sorry but with Making Tax Digital and the fact that most banks now have apps that allow you to tag payments in seconds I do not see a quarterly VAT return as that complex especially as flat rate turnover based options are available.
And removing the £90,000 barrier by making it completely unavoidsable would provide a lot of companies with an incentive to work a bit harder rather than stopping as their turnover hits £7,000 for the month...
One* benefit** of Brexit for VAT is that boxes 2, 8 and 9 have been rendered pretty much null and void unless you're trading out of Belfast.
* The only
** It's actually been very very bad if you previously triangulated, now you need to employ various EU accountants instead of just submitting an intrastat as an SME..
Richard Tice was interviewed by Andrew Neil on Times Radio saying that the target for Reform is millions and millions of votes. UKIP got 3,881,099 votes in GE15, does anyone think that Reform UK will beat that in GE24?
That was 12.9%, and they could get more than that this time. Turnout was 66.4% in 2015.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
It really is quite funny how the line from the Sunak loyalists has changed over the last 24 hours.
Last night: "Ha ha! Sunak has really won the debate and nailed Starmer with the £2000 tax thing!"
Today: "Oh really all this talk about whether Sunak was lying is a distraction from the real issues."
Except, the Labour £2,000 extra tax thing is now out there as a real Thing.
Starmer’s team aggressively fighting back now & calling Sunak a liar over claims he made about small boats
Seems they are in real panic mode
Really? Labour can now spend the next 4 weeks calling Rishi a liar - and has multiple bits of evidence to back it up.
I would call that just about the worst position possible for a politician to be in..
So you think a politician calling another politician a liar is going to persuade the public, when the general consensus is they all are the same
Being honest I think your love of the Tory party is completely impossible to understand.
Why - I am a one nation conservative and my party has lost its way
That doesn't mean that I will suddenly vote for another party, rather than try to influence my party to return to sanity and the centre
Your party hasn't so much lost it's way as been taking over (slowly) by a group of right wing clueless (often facist) loonies. Remember that prior to 2019 I voted Conservative - I was very much a centralist Tory but Bozo destroyed that in August - October 2019 and you amongst various others ignored the fact.
I'm going to be blunt but the best thing for the current Tory party is for it to be completely destroyed so that a new centralist right wing party can be formed from it's remains...
Except the current Tory government where the most senior figures in the Cabinet are Sunak, Hunt and Cameron IS the most centralist right wing party you are going to get in the UK anytime soon. Sunak toppled Johnson, Hunt was Johnson's opponent for the 2019 Tory leadership and Cameron led the Remain campaign in 2016 against Johnson's Leave campaign.
Not to mention the fact that Farage is back as leader of a Reform party polling over 10%, if the Tories were replaced it would be by a Farage led hard right populist party NOT any new centrist party
But dig behind the current figure heads and who is going to replace Rishi in September / October this year. It isn't going to be a centralist it's going to be the more populist facist who wins the members vote.
The reason why I'm happy to wear the "he loves Labour" hat on here is that I don't want to be within 1000 miles of any part of the blame for the next Tory party leader...
Not that it actually matters because I said in 2019 that Bozo would be the last Tory PM ever although he didn't manage to last all 5 years (and got replaced twice) I see no reason to believe my prediction that the 2019 Government will be the last one ever formed by the Tory party.
Re your first paragraph, has anyone actually done any digging on this? There seems to be a generally accepted opinion that someone of the harder right is going to be next Tory leader but is that based on facts?
For example if you took various seat levels for the Tories, looked at who would be left are we certain that they are majority to the right? As far as I know (and I know nothing, about anything) it could actually be that there would be a much greater number of one nation centrists who might be able to lock out the last two candidates from their wing.
Just because the remaining seats would by definition be stronger Tory seats it doesn’t necessarily follow that their MPs are further to the right.
If there ended up 160 Tories and 120 were one nation then they could ensure one of their tribe takes over. The same is true of course for the result being the other way. Like I said, unless someone has really delved into this we are just speculating.
There’s not a doubt it will be Patel v Badenoch in the final. What is interesting is what wedge issues they will find to fight each other on.
If a moderate Tory wants to say xx moderate Tory will make final as normally happens, that’s just wish casting this time.
If it was down to members maybe, even The Mogg would have a good chance of winning the Conservative members vote. With MPs picking the final 2 Barclay v Tugendhat is more likely, especially as most redwall ERG Leaver MPs will have lost their seats and the Tory parliamentary party will be overall likely posher and more southern than it is now
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
Lads' Army Tax
Private Pike Tax.
Don't tell em tax?
Land Army tax, for that matter, although it's certainly not going to increase the tax take from those unfortunate enough to be sent to work in unpaid gangs for once and possibly future Tory voting farmers.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
It really is quite funny how the line from the Sunak loyalists has changed over the last 24 hours.
Last night: "Ha ha! Sunak has really won the debate and nailed Starmer with the £2000 tax thing!"
Today: "Oh really all this talk about whether Sunak was lying is a distraction from the real issues."
Except, the Labour £2,000 extra tax thing is now out there as a real Thing.
Is "a real Thing" nowadays what we used to call a "lie"?
I was a Tory member for a very short time, but they still send me emails even though I haven't been one for quite a while. Don't know whether this is deliberate or not.
Just got this from Richard Holden:
"I'm just following up on Rishi's email to you below by bringing you the BREAKING NEWS that, according to a snap poll, Rishi Sunak beat Sir Keir Starmer among people who watched the debate.
How did we know this was going to happen? Because only Rishi Sunak has the track record of delivery, and the bold ideas needed for a brighter future.
And it's a lot easier to stand up your ideas when you actually have a plan.
If you missed the debate you can see the best bits here >>>
Thank you to the thousands of you who shared our content at home, and who've chipped in £10, £5, even £1 during the course of the campaign.
Trust me when I say that everything you do really does make a difference.
Together, we're going to keep Sir Keir Starmer out of 10 Downing Street. And deliver the bold action needed for a brighter future.
Yours sincerely, Richard Holden Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party""
Is it kosher, to refer to him as Chief CUP-Holder Holden?
One of the many problems of polling on non binary issues is this. The moment you are polled and ask the pollster what a question means, or try in any way to drill down on its subtleties, you meet with complete refusal to engage. It's essential to their game.
The statement "The state of Israel should not exist" must have about a dozen or more possible significances, from one extreme of "All Jews in Israel should be killed and the land area replaced with non Jews" through "The current land mass should be a shared Palestinian/Jewish homeland" and "It should be part Israel and part Palestine" to another extreme of "Israel should occupy and reoccupy vast areas of adjacent land and render it exclusively Jewish by killing all the others".
So draw no conclusions from data which has a quantitative but not qualitative basis.
One of the many problems of polling on non binary issues is this. The moment you are polled and ask the pollster what a question means, or try in any way to drill down on its subtleties, you meet with complete refusal to engage. It's essential to their game.
The statement "The state of Israel should not exist" must have about a dozen or more possible significances, from one extreme of "All Jews in Israel should be killed and the land area replaced with non Jews" through "The current land mass should be a shared Palestinian/Jewish homeland" and "It should be part Israel and part Palestine" to another extreme of "Israel should occupy and reoccupy vast areas of adjacent land and render it exclusively Jewish by killing all the others".
So draw no conclusions from data which has a quantitative but not qualitative basis.
Mmmm yes and no. It's true that questions can be interpreted in different ways. But it's hard to imagine large numbers of people agreeing to that statement as meaning "it should be part Israel and part Palestine". If anyone agreed to that statement, my working model of their political opinions would be highly negative unless they explained themselves. Assuming good faith is generally a good policy, but it's very hard to do so with some statements.
That is absurd. I have met Holden and he is a capable politician but that is totally undemocratic.
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
Good evening, I'm from Essex In case you couldn't tell My given name is Dickie I come from Billericay And I'm doing very well
That is absurd. I have met Holden and he is a capable politician but that is totally undemocratic.
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
He was a great constituency MP (mine).
Then his seat was abolished for this election and he almost immediately gave up entirely. Showing he has no sense of duty; he was only ever doing it out of political cynicism.
Unimpressed to put it mildly.
He is also taking a risk, the Basildon part of the Basildon and Billericay seat was Labour in the Blair years and Teresa Gorman only held Billericay narrowly in 1997.
Labour could win it on current polls, especially if a big Reform vote and LD tactical voting. The only truly safe seats in Essex at the moment even on a worst case scenario are Maldon, Rayleigh and Wickford, Witham and Brentwood and Ongar (and probably Essex NW and Epping Forest)
Survation's MRP yesterday had Rayleigh & Wickford going to Labour, astonishingly.
I don't believe that one, even Yougov MRP still has the Conservatives over 100 seats and that was before Rishi's good debate performance last night
@tomorrowsmps 🔵 I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates' list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere. https://x.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1798335719645335579
Quite a brouhaha in the hitherto safe seat of Basildon and Billericay.
The national party have parachuted in the party chairman Richard Holden, of whom no-one has ever heard.
There’s now a blazing row from local Conservative leaders
Electoral Calculus have this as a comfortable Labour gain, which I find fairly baffling tbh. But if the odds were better than the 13/8 you can get on Labour I would certainly have a flutter.
As indeed she should be, assuming that's the appropriate charge under EngLaw.
BTW, how did NF react to being splashed?
Reason I ask, is that back at the dawn of our current millennium, when he ran first time for Gov of Cali, Arnold Schwartzenegger had similar experience. Which he literally brushed off with a smile, which was captured in a great photo. Which was a small but not insignificant boost to his campaign.
(Can't locate the pix but it's out there somewhere in the worldwide web.)
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
It really is quite funny how the line from the Sunak loyalists has changed over the last 24 hours.
Last night: "Ha ha! Sunak has really won the debate and nailed Starmer with the £2000 tax thing!"
Today: "Oh really all this talk about whether Sunak was lying is a distraction from the real issues."
Except, the Labour £2,000 extra tax thing is now out there as a real Thing.
Is "a real Thing" nowadays what we used to call a "lie"?
Labour will put up taxes. That is a real Thing. The lie is where Starmer is trying to pretend they won't.
@tomorrowsmps 🔵 I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates' list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere. https://x.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1798335719645335579
Quite a brouhaha in the hitherto safe seat of Basildon and Billericay.
The national party have parachuted in the party chairman Richard Holden, of whom no-one has ever heard.
There’s now a blazing row from local Conservative leaders
Electoral Calculus have this as a comfortable Labour gain, which I find fairly baffling tbh. But if the odds were better than the 13/8 you can get on Labour I would certainly have a flutter.
A gentle reminder that any given Muslim is far, far more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than to perpetrate one.
The deliberate insinuation that Muslims are all bad is gross bigotry, yet oddly tolerated in certain circles.
Where would we be without painfully meaningless, boring left platitudes designed to avoid the fucking obvious? Congrats on getting yours in so quick
Well, we'd probably live in a fascist hellscape created by people like you.
Serious question. What do you think happens to a liberal society if you import millions of illiberal people, and it turns out they don’t assimilate, and instead they persist in those values?
I can tell you. What you get is an increasingly less liberal society. More hostile to Jews and gays, and - in the end - not great for women. And that is exactly what we are seeing
Which part of this do you still dispute?
If anyone is prepared to admit to being Jewish I can recommend the funniest book ever written and much more interesting and informative than the sterile racist bilge Leon pumps out daily.
Gee. The thanks I get for trying to save your sorry Zhid arse. I don’t know why I bother
A gentle reminder that any given Muslim is far, far more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than to perpetrate one.
The deliberate insinuation that Muslims are all bad is gross bigotry, yet oddly tolerated in certain circles.
Where would we be without painfully meaningless, boring left platitudes designed to avoid the fucking obvious? Congrats on getting yours in so quick
Well, we'd probably live in a fascist hellscape created by people like you.
Serious question. What do you think happens to a liberal society if you import millions of illiberal people, and it turns out they don’t assimilate, and instead they persist in those values?
I can tell you. What you get is an increasingly less liberal society. More hostile to Jews and gays, and - in the end - not great for women. And that is exactly what we are seeing
Which part of this do you still dispute?
If anyone is prepared to admit to being Jewish I can recommend the funniest book ever written and much more interesting and informative than the sterile racist bilge Leon pumps out daily.
Does it have a chapter called never take chewing gum from a mohel ?
I've got some good mohel jokes if you like but it's not a joke book!
Guy goes into a shop and says 'can I have a pound of potatoes please''
'I'm sorry but I don't sell potatoes'
'Well why have you got them in your window!'
''I'm a mohel. What do you want me to have in my window?'
Is your source "The Joys of Yiddish" (1968) by Leo Rosten?
Was one of my favorite books back in my misspent youth. For what it's worth (2-cents or less) yours truly is not Jewish, nor did I live in a community where Yiddish was heard frequently; indeed, wasn't heard at all. In my humble school we had exactly one Jewish kid, and doubt that she was fluent in anything but (American) English.
TJOY is a great book, and while somewhat dated (hardly surprising after nearly six decades) it remains a treasure trove of Jewish (specifically Ashkenazi) culture AND the early 20th century American immigrant experience.
Check it out!
I enjoyed it as a teenager - very much as part of exploring wider culture. The Bernard Malamud novels, too. How different the New York Yiddish world seemed. But I never got round to trying gefilte fish and lox on bagel - till realising many decades latyer my favourite lunchtime smoked salmon and cream cheese on a bagel was just that.
Regardless who got to the microphones first, There’s not a doubt from the three Debate polls, Starmer won big?
Anyone want to dispute that?
If it was a bad debate for Starmer and Labour, it certainly doesn’t show up anywhere in the debate polling, does it? 2 comfortable overall wins to one wafer thin loss. And across all of them Starmer cleans up in sub questions, who all report much the same thing in questions like on NHS and public services 63% to 25%, on the economy 52% to 36%, and defence and security 43% to 41%, as most honest" 54% to 29% and that the Labour leader "remained the calmest" 51% to 36%.
Who do you trust, is probably the only worthwhile indicator to the election picture you can get from a bit of head to head showbiz like this?
Crumbs of comfort for the Conservatives? It’s being spun as good Sunak won 2-1 on the voted Conservative 2019 group, 60% to 33. Is that actually good, seriously? Surely that’s Labour going from 0 to 33, Tory’s from 100% to 60% in just a Tory voting sub group excluding all other voters? If that’s not horrifically bad in the bigger picture of add that to overall polling, define horrifically bad.
Correct me where wrong, from 1992-1997 Blair only managed a mere 14% of direct switchers. And how much of that 60% above comes out and votes for the Conservatives? That would be difference between respectable result and wipe out, not just direct switchers.
It occurs to me that there is a more pleasant explanation for the milkshake throwing incident. Perhaps Ms. Thomas-Bowen was simply trying to follow Churchill's advice and put milk into a baby.
Granted the odds are against that explanation, but I don't think you should exclude it completely.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
It really is quite funny how the line from the Sunak loyalists has changed over the last 24 hours.
Last night: "Ha ha! Sunak has really won the debate and nailed Starmer with the £2000 tax thing!"
Today: "Oh really all this talk about whether Sunak was lying is a distraction from the real issues."
Except, the Labour £2,000 extra tax thing is now out there as a real Thing.
Is "a real Thing" nowadays what we used to call a "lie"?
Labour's refusing-to-raise-taxes-but-are-going-to-improve-public-services-including-the-NHS is something Labour wanted kept in the dark, but has now had a light shone on it.
Labour could always, you know, do the honesty thing and admit that taxes are going to rise, to ensure services will improve. But last night, Starmer confirmed no tax, NI or VAT rises (except for on private education).
That is the lie at the heart of this election. Either taxes go up - or services don't improve.
I am using my daily image to remind us all of the time somebody threw shit all over RKS in the hope that it encourages somebody to do the same or worse to NF.
As indeed she should be, assuming that's the appropriate charge under EngLaw.
BTW, how did NF react to being splashed?
Reason I ask, is that back at the dawn of our current millennium, when he ran first time for Gov of Cali, Arnold Schwartzenegger had similar experience. Which he literally brushed off with a smile, which was captured in a great photo. Which was a small but not insignificant boost to his campaign.
(Can't locate the pix but it's out there somewhere in the worldwide web.)
You might like to read about this roughly coeval incident if you don't know about it, SSI.
Starmer’s team aggressively fighting back now & calling Sunak a liar over claims he made about small boats
Seems they are in real panic mode
Really? Labour can now spend the next 4 weeks calling Rishi a liar - and has multiple bits of evidence to back it up.
I would call that just about the worst position possible for a politician to be in..
So you think a politician calling another politician a liar is going to persuade the public, when the general consensus is they all are the same
Being honest I think your love of the Tory party is completely impossible to understand.
Why - I am a one nation conservative and my party has lost its way
That doesn't mean that I will suddenly vote for another party, rather than try to influence my party to return to sanity and the centre
Your party hasn't so much lost it's way as been taking over (slowly) by a group of right wing clueless (often facist) loonies. Remember that prior to 2019 I voted Conservative - I was very much a centralist Tory but Bozo destroyed that in August - October 2019 and you amongst various others ignored the fact.
I'm going to be blunt but the best thing for the current Tory party is for it to be completely destroyed so that a new centralist right wing party can be formed from it's remains...
Except the current Tory government where the most senior figures in the Cabinet are Sunak, Hunt and Cameron IS the most centralist right wing party you are going to get in the UK anytime soon. Sunak toppled Johnson, Hunt was Johnson's opponent for the 2019 Tory leadership and Cameron led the Remain campaign in 2016 against Johnson's Leave campaign.
Not to mention the fact that Farage is back as leader of a Reform party polling over 10%, if the Tories were replaced it would be by a Farage led hard right populist party NOT any new centrist party
But dig behind the current figure heads and who is going to replace Rishi in September / October this year. It isn't going to be a centralist it's going to be the more populist facist who wins the members vote.
The reason why I'm happy to wear the "he loves Labour" hat on here is that I don't want to be within 1000 miles of any part of the blame for the next Tory party leader...
Not that it actually matters because I said in 2019 that Bozo would be the last Tory PM ever although he didn't manage to last all 5 years (and got replaced twice) I see no reason to believe my prediction that the 2019 Government will be the last one ever formed by the Tory party.
Re your first paragraph, has anyone actually done any digging on this? There seems to be a generally accepted opinion that someone of the harder right is going to be next Tory leader but is that based on facts?
For example if you took various seat levels for the Tories, looked at who would be left are we certain that they are majority to the right? As far as I know (and I know nothing, about anything) it could actually be that there would be a much greater number of one nation centrists who might be able to lock out the last two candidates from their wing.
Just because the remaining seats would by definition be stronger Tory seats it doesn’t necessarily follow that their MPs are further to the right.
If there ended up 160 Tories and 120 were one nation then they could ensure one of their tribe takes over. The same is true of course for the result being the other way. Like I said, unless someone has really delved into this we are just speculating.
There’s not a doubt it will be Patel v Badenoch in the final. What is interesting is what wedge issues they will find to fight each other on.
If a moderate Tory wants to say xx moderate Tory will make final as normally happens, that’s just wish casting this time.
If it was down to members maybe, even The Mogg would have a good chance of winning the Conservative members vote. With MPs picking the final 2 Barclay v Tugendhat is more likely, especially as most redwall ERG Leaver MPs will have lost their seats and the Tory parliamentary party will be overall likely posher and more southern than it is now
As I said, wish casting 😇
But there is a VERY SERIOUS betting angle to what you said HY, if you are correct, are the next Tory leader markets priced on the Tory parliamentary party being smaller, southern, posher and more moderate?
Or are they priced up on the outgoing Tory parliamentary party, and current big fish in that?
As indeed she should be, assuming that's the appropriate charge under EngLaw.
BTW, how did NF react to being splashed?
Reason I ask, is that back at the dawn of our current millennium, when he ran first time for Gov of Cali, Arnold Schwartzenegger had similar experience. Which he literally brushed off with a smile, which was captured in a great photo. Which was a small but not insignificant boost to his campaign.
(Can't locate the pix but it's out there somewhere in the worldwide web.)
Despite the horrors of war Odessa is enchanting on a soft warm summer evening. The woman are extraordinary. The cool breezes blow off the Black Sea, freshening the boulevards
In a weird way I can see why the Russians want it back. They built it. They paid for it. It is entirely Russian in origin, it would not exist if it wasn’t for
Or is it a reference to the process for making shakes?
The bloke who egged Corbyn got done for assault & 28 days jail.
I think all the idiots who egged him on should get even longer stretches.
Well most of them all go to Glastonbury. Pen them in and make them listen to Radiohead live every day for a few weeks.
{Judge puts on black cap}
You have been found guilty by pb.com of heinous crimes. I sentence you as follows. You shall be taken from the place to a place of punishment. There you shall be placed in a cell with Piers Morgan, Piers Corbyn and Julian Assange. The only entertainment will be (a) an externally controlled speaker playing 24/7, the worst songs of Radiohead. (b) a computer set to allow you to only read the comments on Conservative Home and program in Python. The only food allowed will be Dominos Pineapple Pizza.
Despite the horrors of war Odessa is enchanting on a soft warm summer evening. The woman are extraordinary. The cool breezes blow off the Black Sea, freshening the boulevards
In a weird way I can see why the Russians want it back. They built it. They paid for it. It is entirely Russian in origin, it would not exist if it wasn’t for
Or is it a reference to the process for making shakes?
The bloke who egged Corbyn got done for assault & 28 days jail.
I think all the idiots who egged him on should get even longer stretches.
Well most of them all go to Glastonbury. Pen them in and make them listen to Radiohead live every day for a few weeks.
{Judge puts on black cap}
You have been found guilty by pb.com of heinous crimes. I sentence you as follows. You shall be taken from the place to a place of punishment. There you shall be placed in a cell with Piers Morgan, Piers Corbyn and Julian Assange. The only entertainment will be (a) an externally controlled speaker playing 24/7, the worst songs of Radiohead. (b) a computer set to allow you to only read the comments on Conservative Home and program in Python. The only food allowed will be Dominos Pineapple Pizza.
May the Lord have mercy upon your soul.
That sounds like an ok computer, kid. A worse one can be imagined.
Despite the horrors of war Odessa is enchanting on a soft warm summer evening. The woman are extraordinary. The cool breezes blow off the Black Sea, freshening the boulevards
In a weird way I can see why the Russians want it back. They built it. They paid for it. It is entirely Russian in origin, it would not exist if it wasn’t for
As indeed she should be, assuming that's the appropriate charge under EngLaw.
BTW, how did NF react to being splashed?
Reason I ask, is that back at the dawn of our current millennium, when he ran first time for Gov of Cali, Arnold Schwartzenegger had similar experience. Which he literally brushed off with a smile, which was captured in a great photo. Which was a small but not insignificant boost to his campaign.
(Can't locate the pix but it's out there somewhere in the worldwide web.)
There was a great quote from GMF about going to a restaurant with Schwartzenegger, who was told by a waiter to put on a tie. Something about watching a very small person realise he had upset an Easter Island statute.
I'm on holiday next week for a week so thankfully I'm spared a week of it. But I've just discovered that the temperature is currently 40C so I'm not expecting to do much beyond sitting in the shade trying to keep cool.
. . . meanwhile back at the ranch . . . highlights from yesterday's primaries in the USA . . .
NEW JERSEY PRIMARY 2024
> Biden is winning 88.5% of the Dem primary vote for POTUS; Trump was unopposed.
> Congressman Andy Kim is winning Dem US Senate nomination with 75% and carrying all counties
> In Rep primary, head of NJ Right to Life (anti-abortion) Curtis Bashaw (45.6%) is beating Trump-annointed Christine Serrano Glassner (38.6%) for US Senate nomination
> NOTE that incumbent US Sen. Bob Menendez (D-Qatar) who is currently standing trial in federal court, did NOT file for the primary BUT has recently filed to run as an Independent in the general election.
> His son, Congressman Rob Menendez, is winning renomination in the Democratic 8th District primary with 54% of the vote in his daddy's home turf.
Regardless who got to the microphones first, There’s not a doubt from the three Debate polls, Starmer won big?
Anyone want to dispute that?
If it was a bad debate for Starmer and Labour, it certainly doesn’t show up anywhere in the debate polling, does it? 2 comfortable overall wins to one wafer thin loss. And across all of them Starmer cleans up in sub questions, who all report much the same thing in questions like on NHS and public services 63% to 25%, on the economy 52% to 36%, and defence and security 43% to 41%, as most honest" 54% to 29% and that the Labour leader "remained the calmest" 51% to 36%.
Who do you trust, is probably the only worthwhile indicator to the election picture you can get from a bit of head to head showbiz like this?
Crumbs of comfort for the Conservatives? It’s being spun as good Sunak won 2-1 on the voted Conservative 2019 group, 60% to 33. Is that actually good, seriously? Surely that’s Labour going from 0 to 33, Tory’s from 100% to 60% in just a Tory voting sub group excluding all other voters? If that’s not horrifically bad in the bigger picture of add that to overall polling, define horrifically bad.
Correct me where wrong, from 1992-1997 Blair only managed a mere 14% of direct switchers. And how much of that 60% above comes out and votes for the Conservatives? That would be difference between respectable result and wipe out, not just direct switchers.
There is a VI poll out at 5pm which should give us a better idea*. But yes, your analysis seems fair.
A gentle reminder that any given Muslim is far, far more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than to perpetrate one.
The deliberate insinuation that Muslims are all bad is gross bigotry, yet oddly tolerated in certain circles.
Where would we be without painfully meaningless, boring left platitudes designed to avoid the fucking obvious? Congrats on getting yours in so quick
Well, we'd probably live in a fascist hellscape created by people like you.
Serious question. What do you think happens to a liberal society if you import millions of illiberal people, and it turns out they don’t assimilate, and instead they persist in those values?
I can tell you. What you get is an increasingly less liberal society. More hostile to Jews and gays, and - in the end - not great for women. And that is exactly what we are seeing
Which part of this do you still dispute?
If anyone is prepared to admit to being Jewish I can recommend the funniest book ever written and much more interesting and informative than the sterile racist bilge Leon pumps out daily.
Does it have a chapter called never take chewing gum from a mohel ?
I've got some good mohel jokes if you like but it's not a joke book!
Guy goes into a shop and says 'can I have a pound of potatoes please''
'I'm sorry but I don't sell potatoes'
'Well why have you got them in your window!'
''I'm a mohel. What do you want me to have in my window?'
Is your source "The Joys of Yiddish" (1968) by Leo Rosten?
Was one of my favorite books back in my misspent youth. For what it's worth (2-cents or less) yours truly is not Jewish, nor did I live in a community where Yiddish was heard frequently; indeed, wasn't heard at all. In my humble school we had exactly one Jewish kid, and doubt that she was fluent in anything but (American) English.
TJOY is a great book, and while somewhat dated (hardly surprising after nearly six decades) it remains a treasure trove of Jewish (specifically Ashkenazi) culture AND the early 20th century American immigrant experience.
Check it out!
Tony Curtis who was Jewish from New York told a nice story. He lived in a Jewish area but as a boy was invited to a Catholic Mass. As he was queuing up for communion one of the boys whispered 'Have you farted? "No" he said "Was I supposed to?"
Comments
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
I really don't see how it makes it a harder decision, anyone in business will know that the true cost of hiring someone is way more than the headline advertised salary...
https://x.com/jeromestarkey/status/1798344639948415187
Video: British paras jumping into Normandy are greeted by French customs
Large businesses, there is no direct operations. Its strategy, including lobbying governments (directly / indirectly).
That's what we all want isn't it?
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jun/05/general-election-labour-conservatives-sunak-boris-johnson-tv-debate-tax-plans-d-day?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with:block-66605fde8f08fb1be3410928#block-66605fde8f08fb1be3410928
And removing the £90,000 barrier by making it completely unavoidsable would provide a lot of companies with an incentive to work a bit harder rather than stopping as their turnover hits £7,000 for the month...
Labour are thus lying, the Conservatives are not. Mind you I quite like well funded public services so I won't be voting Conservative.
Last night:
"Ha ha! Sunak has really won the debate and nailed Starmer with the £2000 tax thing!"
Today:
"Oh really all this talk about whether Sunak was lying is a distraction from the real issues."
My line has been rather consistent on this for ages, all the way back to Truss being wrong as looking at it from wrong end of the telescope, Sunak was wrong about NI++ scheme etc. the key problem the UK has is productivity.
https://thepostmillennial.com/blackrock-citadel-to-launch-texas-stock-exchange-to-rival-nasdaq-nyse
A new group called The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) is set to start a new national stock exchange to challenge the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
A spokesperson for Citadel Securities, one of the companies backing the effort with BlackRock, told the Wall Street Journal that the group has raised about $120 million and plans to file registration documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later this year.
The TXSE is planning to begin in 2025 and host its first listing in 2026. The exchange is looking to compete for primary and dual listings of exchange-traded products.
The group is aiming to capitalize on disaffection in the market regarding increasing compliance costs at Nasdaq and NYSE, and newer regulations including those that set diversity targets for boards of Nasdaq companies. Some have called the new alternative an “anti-woke” exchange.
According to The Journal, dozens of companies are moving to states with more favorable regulatory and taxation policies, which has made Texas home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.
In years past there had been dozens of regional stock exchanges outside of New York, but most were shut down or acquired. The Boston Stock Exchange, the Chicago Stock Exchange, and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange were folded into the NYSE and Nasdaq in the past two decades.
What do you think of the medical staff that facilitate it, whilst simultaneously telling the world they are overworked and underpaid (guffaw)?
Is your source "The Joys of Yiddish" (1968) by Leo Rosten?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joys_of_Yiddish
Was one of my favorite books back in my misspent youth. For what it's worth (2-cents or less) yours truly is not Jewish, nor did I live in a community where Yiddish was heard frequently; indeed, wasn't heard at all. In my humble school we had exactly one Jewish kid, and doubt that she was fluent in anything but (American) English.
TJOY is a great book, and while somewhat dated (hardly surprising after nearly six decades) it remains a treasure trove of Jewish (specifically Ashkenazi) culture AND the early 20th century American immigrant experience.
Check it out!
Or perhaps CUP-Bearer General?
* The only
** It's actually been very very bad if you previously triangulated, now you need to employ various EU accountants instead of just submitting an intrastat as an SME..
But the actual return is, yes, much easier.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/05/onlyfans-model-charged-nigel-farage/
I mean, seriously?
Or is it a reference to the process for making shakes?
https://www.oblaw.co.uk/what-is-assault-by-beating/#:~:text=An assault by beating conviction,the culpability of the accused.
Assuming good faith is generally a good policy, but it's very hard to do so with some statements.
In case you couldn't tell
My given name is Dickie
I come from Billericay
And I'm doing very well
The national party have parachuted in the party chairman Richard Holden, of whom no-one has ever heard.
There’s now a blazing row from local Conservative leaders
Electoral Calculus have this as a comfortable Labour gain, which I find fairly baffling tbh. But if the odds were better than the 13/8 you can get on Labour I would certainly have a flutter.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckkkq4kx3l0o
https://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/24367978.conservative-chairman-richard-holden-sparks-fury-basildon/
BTW, how did NF react to being splashed?
Reason I ask, is that back at the dawn of our current millennium, when he ran first time for Gov of Cali, Arnold Schwartzenegger had similar experience. Which he literally brushed off with a smile, which was captured in a great photo. Which was a small but not insignificant boost to his campaign.
(Can't locate the pix but it's out there somewhere in the worldwide web.)
"People queued up this morning to get their hands on the first banknotes to feature the King".
https://www.itv.com/news/2024-06-04/all-change-as-king-charles-banknotes-enter-circulation
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/paint-protest-group-guilty-1305217.html
Anyone want to dispute that?
If it was a bad debate for Starmer and Labour, it certainly doesn’t show up anywhere in the debate polling, does it? 2 comfortable overall wins to one wafer thin loss. And across all of them Starmer cleans up in sub questions, who all report much the same thing in questions like on NHS and public services 63% to 25%, on the economy 52% to 36%, and defence and security 43% to 41%, as most honest" 54% to 29% and that the Labour leader "remained the calmest" 51% to 36%.
Who do you trust, is probably the only worthwhile indicator to the election picture you can get from a bit of head to head showbiz like this?
Crumbs of comfort for the Conservatives? It’s being spun as good Sunak won 2-1 on the voted Conservative 2019 group, 60% to 33. Is that actually good, seriously? Surely that’s Labour going from 0 to 33, Tory’s from 100% to 60% in just a Tory voting sub group excluding all other voters? If that’s not horrifically bad in the bigger picture of add that to overall polling, define horrifically bad.
Correct me where wrong, from 1992-1997 Blair only managed a mere 14% of direct switchers. And how much of that 60% above comes out and votes for the Conservatives? That would be difference between respectable result and wipe out, not just direct switchers.
Granted the odds are against that explanation, but I don't think you should exclude it completely.
Labour could always, you know, do the honesty thing and admit that taxes are going to rise, to ensure services will improve. But last night, Starmer confirmed no tax, NI or VAT rises (except for on private education).
That is the lie at the heart of this election. Either taxes go up - or services don't improve.
A surprising number of people don't realise you can assault someone, in the legal sense, by making them *feel* threatened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_punch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKM6nn8ie2A
But there is a VERY SERIOUS betting angle to what you said HY, if you are correct, are the next Tory leader markets priced on the Tory parliamentary party being smaller, southern, posher and more moderate?
Or are they priced up on the outgoing Tory parliamentary party, and current big fish in that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LscVkmzvnM0
In a weird way I can see why the Russians want it back. They built it. They paid for it. It is entirely Russian in origin, it would not exist if it wasn’t for
Jesus Christ I just heard a massive explosion
You have been found guilty by pb.com of heinous crimes. I sentence you as follows. You shall be taken from the place to a place of punishment. There you shall be placed in a cell with Piers Morgan, Piers Corbyn and Julian Assange. The only entertainment will be (a) an externally controlled speaker playing 24/7, the worst songs of Radiohead. (b) a computer set to allow you to only read the comments on Conservative Home and program in Python. The only food allowed will be Dominos Pineapple Pizza.
May the Lord have mercy upon your soul.
https://x.com/faizashaheen/status/1798369070657782177
Thanks. I wish they separated out 1 and 2. Market too thin to do much with atm, gun to head I'd be backing 0 but I don't have a gun to my head
Oh, hold on, I forgot the courts have collapsed because of underfunding, so you won't get sentenced until 2026...
Faiza Shaheen
@faizashaheen
I am standing as an independent candidate for Chingford & Woodford Green at the General Election on 4 July.
For more info: http://faizashaheen.co.uk
Sign up to volunteer: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/help-faiza-shaheen-beat-iain-duncan-smith-in-chingford-and-woodford-green/
Let's do this!
https://x.com/faizashaheen/status/1798369070657782177
Doubt this will make much difference but will give the Tories slightly more of a chance...
NEW JERSEY PRIMARY 2024
> Biden is winning 88.5% of the Dem primary vote for POTUS; Trump was unopposed.
> Congressman Andy Kim is winning Dem US Senate nomination with 75% and carrying all counties
> In Rep primary, head of NJ Right to Life (anti-abortion) Curtis Bashaw (45.6%) is beating Trump-annointed Christine Serrano Glassner (38.6%) for US Senate nomination
> NOTE that incumbent US Sen. Bob Menendez (D-Qatar) who is currently standing trial in federal court, did NOT file for the primary BUT has recently filed to run as an Independent in the general election.
> His son, Congressman Rob Menendez, is winning renomination in the Democratic 8th District primary with 54% of the vote in his daddy's home turf.
There is one I am aware of running until June 16th, which could be implemented by a change to a Transport Advisory Leaflet.
Do Ministers have the power to do this at this time?
I'll talk specifics if anyone wishes, but it's really a process question.
*METHODOLOGY CHANGE KLAXON