New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
So heathener isn’t the clever Jewish girl who avoids the kosher trap in the restaurant with the cream cake?
Not fair to Heathener. I've never seen it myself and know of it only by incidental mentions such as this on PB. Wasn't interested in that sort of stuff.
Sorry it was in reference to Inglorious bastards and I have no doubt that H is as sharp as the sharpest tack.
The Nazi villain offers the Jewish heroine a pudding that is non kosher to try and flush her out and she casually accepts and disarms the trap. It’s a great distillation of the simplicity of fascist simplistic beliefs against the flexibility of freedom and survival.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 10m Tory HQ desperately shovelling out the entire manifesto tonight to try and move the agenda on from D-Day is a further example of the chaos inside the campaign.
Yet no proposed IHT cut, despite Reform now raising the IHT threshold to £2 million?
A Stamp Duty cut for a few first time buyers isn't going to make any significant difference to Tory voteshare.
If that is all Sunak and Hunt have bring back Theresa May I say, at least she managed to write a manifesto that got the Tories over 40% and over 300 seats not heading for near wipeout!
There are a lot of people who are also Tory voters, me for example (ok I can’t vote) who have issues about inheritance tax being cut.
A lot of Tory voters, or target voters, have worked their bollocks off but also mixed with people who haven’t, their friends and associates have pocketed money without any effort. They see very very stupid friends walking out with millions without any skills or brains and there is a British, and Danish, thing where people aren’t happy with people flashing it without earning it.
I have many friends who’ve inherited serious millions, some have worked hard to prove themselves worthy, some have been determined to use the money as a platform to outperform, some have used the money to do good, some are lazy fuckers who have no clue - and every time the ones who are the latter are the ones who treat waiters terribly, are entitled, have no direction or fear of what comes next.
There has to be an inheritance tax so nobody can just not contribute. Some wise soul said, I want to leave them enough to do something but not enough to do nothing.
A lot of people don’t understand that without a successful society arounfpd them, a stable society, their properties would be worthless, their shares worthless etc.
It’s not money the inheritors strived for and it was on the back of millions of people who struggled but accepted an unequal society. There needs to be a balance otherwise the ones who have nothing stop tolerating the others.
I am not saying there should be not inheritance tax at all, though 55% say it should be abolished completely but certainly the threshold should be raised to £2million+ in my view so only the very richest pay that.
65% of voters and 77% of Tory voters back raising the threshold above £325k
A rate of 20 or 25% with a lower exempt amount would quite possibly bring in more than IHT currently does.
At £2m or so they're already evading or avoiding IHT so HYUFD's suggestion is about as useful as a chocolate welding torch.
Property tends to be the big crunch for going over thresholds and people get attached to family homes. So I tend to think that there should be a relatively high rate, low threshold but with a carve out for one property. Provided you live in it for five years. Sell it within that time and the taxman comes knocking.
No good; that merely pampers Tory voters in the Home Counties as opposed to Labour voters in Sedgefield and drives up the hotspot around London*. I'm coming round to the idea of abolishing IHT and imposing CGT on all inheritances - everyone has an allowance, and so on.
*Which is why HYUFD loves it, not entirely irrationally for him.
Abolish Inheritance Tax altogether and simply tax all inheritances as income.
Anyone working for a living shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone inheriting one.
They aren't, the IHT rate of 40% over £325k inherited is the same as the higher rate of income tax and higher than the basic rate of income tax.
Only the additional rate of tax for those earning over £125k (ie effectively the top 1% of earners) is above that at 45%
I see the Daily Express has clarified that Sunak's D-Day apology is 'to Daily Express readers'.
Are they the only ones he thinks are still listening?
As the David Frost version of the "The Times is read by people who run the country" joke goes,
The Daily Telegraph by the people who remember the country as it used to be run. The Express by people who think the country is still being run that way.
One of those strange routines that passed through a whole generation of comics. Everyone knows the Yes, Minister version, but it looks like it originally goes back to a TUC President from the 1970s.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
Back in the Age of Sail, if you were really desperate you loaded up the cutlery into the cannons and fired that at the enemy. This is the modern political equivalent at firing spoons at a ship-of-the-line.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
So heathener isn’t the clever Jewish girl who avoids the kosher trap in the restaurant with the cream cake?
Not fair to Heathener. I've never seen it myself and know of it only by incidental mentions such as this on PB. Wasn't interested in that sort of stuff.
Sorry it was in reference to Inglorious bastards and I have no doubt that H is as sharp as the sharpest tack.
The Nazi villain offers the Jewish heroine a pudding that is non kosher to try and flush her out and she casually accepts and disarms the trap. It’s a great distillation of the simplicity of fascist simplistic beliefs against the flexibility of freedom and survival.
In both Islam and Judaism, breaking the "minor" rules - diet etc - is specifically allowed to save life.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 10m Tory HQ desperately shovelling out the entire manifesto tonight to try and move the agenda on from D-Day is a further example of the chaos inside the campaign.
Yet no proposed IHT cut, despite Reform now raising the IHT threshold to £2 million?
A Stamp Duty cut for a few first time buyers isn't going to make any significant difference to Tory voteshare.
If that is all Sunak and Hunt have bring back Theresa May I say, at least she managed to write a manifesto that got the Tories over 40% and over 300 seats not heading for near wipeout!
There are a lot of people who are also Tory voters, me for example (ok I can’t vote) who have issues about inheritance tax being cut.
A lot of Tory voters, or target voters, have worked their bollocks off but also mixed with people who haven’t, their friends and associates have pocketed money without any effort. They see very very stupid friends walking out with millions without any skills or brains and there is a British, and Danish, thing where people aren’t happy with people flashing it without earning it.
I have many friends who’ve inherited serious millions, some have worked hard to prove themselves worthy, some have been determined to use the money as a platform to outperform, some have used the money to do good, some are lazy fuckers who have no clue - and every time the ones who are the latter are the ones who treat waiters terribly, are entitled, have no direction or fear of what comes next.
There has to be an inheritance tax so nobody can just not contribute. Some wise soul said, I want to leave them enough to do something but not enough to do nothing.
A lot of people don’t understand that without a successful society arounfpd them, a stable society, their properties would be worthless, their shares worthless etc.
It’s not money the inheritors strived for and it was on the back of millions of people who struggled but accepted an unequal society. There needs to be a balance otherwise the ones who have nothing stop tolerating the others.
I am not saying there should be not inheritance tax at all, though 55% say it should be abolished completely but certainly the threshold should be raised to £2million+ in my view so only the very richest pay that.
65% of voters and 77% of Tory voters back raising the threshold above £325k
A rate of 20 or 25% with a lower exempt amount would quite possibly bring in more than IHT currently does.
At £2m or so they're already evading or avoiding IHT so HYUFD's suggestion is about as useful as a chocolate welding torch.
Property tends to be the big crunch for going over thresholds and people get attached to family homes. So I tend to think that there should be a relatively high rate, low threshold but with a carve out for one property. Provided you live in it for five years. Sell it within that time and the taxman comes knocking.
No good; that merely pampers Tory voters in the Home Counties as opposed to Labour voters in Sedgefield and drives up the hotspot around London*. I'm coming round to the idea of abolishing IHT and imposing CGT on all inheritances - everyone has an allowance, and so on.
*Which is why HYUFD loves it, not entirely irrationally for him.
Abolish Inheritance Tax altogether and simply tax all inheritances as income.
Anyone working for a living shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone inheriting one.
They aren't, the IHT rate of 40% over £325k inherited is the same as the higher rate of income tax and higher than the basic rate of income tax.
Only the additional rate of tax for those earning over £125k (ie effectively the top 1% of earners) is above that at 45%
I don't think you understand this very well.
If you inherit £30k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £30k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £100k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £100k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £325k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £325k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £1mn, what tax do you pay? If you earn £1mn, what tax do you pay?
Working for your income shouldn't be taxed more than getting your income through other means, yet we tax someone who earns £32.5k more than we tax someone who inherits £325k.
We need to tax income less, and unearned incomes more.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
Might as well go the whole hog and abolish the Welsh Parliament and London Mayoralty. If Westminster can just take back their powers then there's no point having them.
Do the Tories really want to have a body of law where a Labour government can stop Tory councils doing anything the Labour government doesn't like. Isn't it better to have a diversity of local policies and then the better ideas spread.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
Liquid checks to be re-introduced at airports which had briefly got rid of them.
Talk about going backwards.
Any reason given? Someone got wind of something?
IIRC the pilot of dropping the checks involved new-tech scanners, so the assumption would be that the new scanners aren’t as good as the salesman said they were. Presumably spooks ‘mystery shop’ airports with genuine explosives (stored safely) from time to time.
There's an excellent video on YouTube about how the new scanners work, and how they attempt to identify liquids
The conclusion was that the 3D scanning was great for meaning you don't need to remove electronic, but that the methods used to identify liquids where not accurate enough yet. (They work by having XRays at two slightly different wavelengths, and then measure absorption rates of each of the two. By measuring the difference, you can be *reasonably* accurate, but it's far from foolproof currently.)
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
I though Flynn did best. Rayner took no nonsense and didn't make any major gaffe. Penny played a hospital pass badly, she should have stayed clear of the £2000 nonsense. Daisy good but shouting, Denya a bit anonymous like the PC guy. Farage repeating the same old crap in the same old way, not getting much support from the audience.
I can't see it shifting things much. Brave of Mordaunt to turn up at all to defend the indefensible.
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
Honestly, it's not. I'm 49 and I've heard of it but nothing more... I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. I don't recall having heard it mentioned for, I dunno, 10 years or so? If Heathener is half my age then never having heard of it is completely plausible.
Mordaunt did surprisingly well, given the appalling wicket. Rayner was fluid annd imperious. Farage delivered some great lines but we’ve heard it all before.
The Welsh guy, Cooper and the Scottish guy were all fine.
The Green was totally cringe.
Doubt it changed a single vote, so on those grounds, Labour “won”.
I think that 'we've' is the operative word here. We are politics nerds. Of course we think Nigel's points are old hat - many casual viewers will not be as familiar, and surely any objective take must conclude he was the clear winner in the face of a fairly hostile crowd.
I mentioned earlier that Reform in Canada in '93 only really contested around half of the constituencies, with pretty negligible numbers from Toronto eastwards. This really boosted their "vote efficiency" compared to our expectations for Reform UK, and emphasises that their rise was more like that of the SNP, reaching deep into the mainstream middle ground in their own region. Here are some other interesting facts about 1993. First, the Tories were leading the polls six weeks out from election day. Second, the Tories had entered office with a landslide of three-quarters of seats, nine years previously, so it was quite a fall in total. Third, Reform stood no candidates at all in the strange province where they speak a funny language. Québec has around 25 per cent of the federal constituencies. So in part it was the Bloc québécois that effected the total Tory meltdown; not really a conservative party, but fairly chauvinistic on the language question.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 10m Tory HQ desperately shovelling out the entire manifesto tonight to try and move the agenda on from D-Day is a further example of the chaos inside the campaign.
Yet no proposed IHT cut, despite Reform now raising the IHT threshold to £2 million?
A Stamp Duty cut for a few first time buyers isn't going to make any significant difference to Tory voteshare.
If that is all Sunak and Hunt have bring back Theresa May I say, at least she managed to write a manifesto that got the Tories over 40% and over 300 seats not heading for near wipeout!
There are a lot of people who are also Tory voters, me for example (ok I can’t vote) who have issues about inheritance tax being cut.
A lot of Tory voters, or target voters, have worked their bollocks off but also mixed with people who haven’t, their friends and associates have pocketed money without any effort. They see very very stupid friends walking out with millions without any skills or brains and there is a British, and Danish, thing where people aren’t happy with people flashing it without earning it.
I have many friends who’ve inherited serious millions, some have worked hard to prove themselves worthy, some have been determined to use the money as a platform to outperform, some have used the money to do good, some are lazy fuckers who have no clue - and every time the ones who are the latter are the ones who treat waiters terribly, are entitled, have no direction or fear of what comes next.
There has to be an inheritance tax so nobody can just not contribute. Some wise soul said, I want to leave them enough to do something but not enough to do nothing.
A lot of people don’t understand that without a successful society arounfpd them, a stable society, their properties would be worthless, their shares worthless etc.
It’s not money the inheritors strived for and it was on the back of millions of people who struggled but accepted an unequal society. There needs to be a balance otherwise the ones who have nothing stop tolerating the others.
I am not saying there should be not inheritance tax at all, though 55% say it should be abolished completely but certainly the threshold should be raised to £2million+ in my view so only the very richest pay that.
65% of voters and 77% of Tory voters back raising the threshold above £325k
A rate of 20 or 25% with a lower exempt amount would quite possibly bring in more than IHT currently does.
At £2m or so they're already evading or avoiding IHT so HYUFD's suggestion is about as useful as a chocolate welding torch.
Property tends to be the big crunch for going over thresholds and people get attached to family homes. So I tend to think that there should be a relatively high rate, low threshold but with a carve out for one property. Provided you live in it for five years. Sell it within that time and the taxman comes knocking.
No good; that merely pampers Tory voters in the Home Counties as opposed to Labour voters in Sedgefield and drives up the hotspot around London*. I'm coming round to the idea of abolishing IHT and imposing CGT on all inheritances - everyone has an allowance, and so on.
*Which is why HYUFD loves it, not entirely irrationally for him.
Abolish Inheritance Tax altogether and simply tax all inheritances as income.
Anyone working for a living shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone inheriting one.
They aren't, the IHT rate of 40% over £325k inherited is the same as the higher rate of income tax and higher than the basic rate of income tax.
Only the additional rate of tax for those earning over £125k (ie effectively the top 1% of earners) is above that at 45%
I don't think you understand this very well.
If you inherit £30k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £30k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £100k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £100k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £325k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £325k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £1mn, what tax do you pay? If you earn £1mn, what tax do you pay?
Working for your income shouldn't be taxed more than getting your income through other means, yet we tax someone who earns £32.5k more than we tax someone who inherits £325k.
We need to tax income less, and unearned incomes more.
I find you one of the most infuriating posters on this site.
9/10 of your posts are complete IEA-fantasy-deregulate-the-fuck-out-of-everything bullshit
And then 1/10 times, you manage to completely nail it.
This is one of those posts.
It's so bloody obvious - and so easy to implement.
If you were standing as my elected representative with that as your signature policy, I'd find it genuinely hard not to vote for you.
I though Flynn did best. Rayner took no nonsense and didn't make any major gaffe. Penny played a hospital pass badly, she should have stayed clear of the £2000 nonsense. Daisy good but shouting, Denya a bit anonymous like the PC guy. Farage repeating the same old crap in the same old way, not getting much support from the audience.
I can't see it shifting things much. Brave of Mordaunt to turn up at all to defend the indefensible.
You have zero ability to separate your feelings about Brexit from the debate you just saw.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
In two minds about that one, as someone who doesn’t want to see personal freedom and economic growth strangled by an ideological anti-car agenda, but also believes in devolution of as many powers as possible to local authorities rather than central government.
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
Honestly, it's not. I'm 49 and I've heard of it but nothing more... I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. I don't recall having heard it mentioned for, I dunno, 10 years or so? If Heathener is half my age then never having heard of it is completely plausible.
But you’ve heard of it, at least. And you know who Penelope Keith is, right? If not, perhaps, Peter Bowles.
I think it suggests that Heathener is surely under 40 which is fine, but other aspects of the Heathener persona - “I take the Sunday Telegraph” - suggest otherwise.
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
Honestly, it's not. I'm 49 and I've heard of it but nothing more... I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. I don't recall having heard it mentioned for, I dunno, 10 years or so? If Heathener is half my age then never having heard of it is completely plausible.
I'm in my late fifties and barely remember it.
Perhaps because we don't really see many repeats of it.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
Core vote max strategy. What the government should be doing is giving more power to local/devolved governments not circumscribing their authority.
People have been campaigning for 20mph limits in Sunak's own constituency for over 20 years. From last year:
The 20s Plenty campaign has the backing of over 150 parish councils and campaigners met at County Hall in Northallerton yesterday with several making passionate pleas about why they want action on speeding now.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 10m Tory HQ desperately shovelling out the entire manifesto tonight to try and move the agenda on from D-Day is a further example of the chaos inside the campaign.
Yet no proposed IHT cut, despite Reform now raising the IHT threshold to £2 million?
A Stamp Duty cut for a few first time buyers isn't going to make any significant difference to Tory voteshare.
If that is all Sunak and Hunt have bring back Theresa May I say, at least she managed to write a manifesto that got the Tories over 40% and over 300 seats not heading for near wipeout!
There are a lot of people who are also Tory voters, me for example (ok I can’t vote) who have issues about inheritance tax being cut.
A lot of Tory voters, or target voters, have worked their bollocks off but also mixed with people who haven’t, their friends and associates have pocketed money without any effort. They see very very stupid friends walking out with millions without any skills or brains and there is a British, and Danish, thing where people aren’t happy with people flashing it without earning it.
I have many friends who’ve inherited serious millions, some have worked hard to prove themselves worthy, some have been determined to use the money as a platform to outperform, some have used the money to do good, some are lazy fuckers who have no clue - and every time the ones who are the latter are the ones who treat waiters terribly, are entitled, have no direction or fear of what comes next.
There has to be an inheritance tax so nobody can just not contribute. Some wise soul said, I want to leave them enough to do something but not enough to do nothing.
A lot of people don’t understand that without a successful society arounfpd them, a stable society, their properties would be worthless, their shares worthless etc.
It’s not money the inheritors strived for and it was on the back of millions of people who struggled but accepted an unequal society. There needs to be a balance otherwise the ones who have nothing stop tolerating the others.
I am not saying there should be not inheritance tax at all, though 55% say it should be abolished completely but certainly the threshold should be raised to £2million+ in my view so only the very richest pay that.
65% of voters and 77% of Tory voters back raising the threshold above £325k
A rate of 20 or 25% with a lower exempt amount would quite possibly bring in more than IHT currently does.
At £2m or so they're already evading or avoiding IHT so HYUFD's suggestion is about as useful as a chocolate welding torch.
Property tends to be the big crunch for going over thresholds and people get attached to family homes. So I tend to think that there should be a relatively high rate, low threshold but with a carve out for one property. Provided you live in it for five years. Sell it within that time and the taxman comes knocking.
No good; that merely pampers Tory voters in the Home Counties as opposed to Labour voters in Sedgefield and drives up the hotspot around London*. I'm coming round to the idea of abolishing IHT and imposing CGT on all inheritances - everyone has an allowance, and so on.
*Which is why HYUFD loves it, not entirely irrationally for him.
Abolish Inheritance Tax altogether and simply tax all inheritances as income.
Anyone working for a living shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone inheriting one.
They aren't, the IHT rate of 40% over £325k inherited is the same as the higher rate of income tax and higher than the basic rate of income tax.
Only the additional rate of tax for those earning over £125k (ie effectively the top 1% of earners) is above that at 45%
I don't think you understand this very well.
If you inherit £30k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £30k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £100k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £100k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £325k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £325k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £1mn, what tax do you pay? If you earn £1mn, what tax do you pay?
Working for your income shouldn't be taxed more than getting your income through other means, yet we tax someone who earns £32.5k more than we tax someone who inherits £325k.
We need to tax income less, and unearned incomes more.
I find you one of the most infuriating posters on this site.
9/10 of your posts are complete IEA-fantasy-deregulate-the-fuck-out-of-everything bullshit
And then 1/10 times, you manage to completely nail it.
This is one of those posts.
It's so bloody obvious - and so easy to implement.
If you were standing as my elected representative with that as your signature policy, I'd find it genuinely hard not to vote for you.
Although you'd have to tax gifts as well to make it consistent.
I though Flynn did best. Rayner took no nonsense and didn't make any major gaffe. Penny played a hospital pass badly, she should have stayed clear of the £2000 nonsense. Daisy good but shouting, Denya a bit anonymous like the PC guy. Farage repeating the same old crap in the same old way, not getting much support from the audience.
I can't see it shifting things much. Brave of Mordaunt to turn up at all to defend the indefensible.
You have zero ability to separate your feelings about Brexit from the debate you just saw.
I don't think I have ever concealed my dislike and contempt for Farage.
He is a mouthy pub boor who has never done anything useful in his life, just criticised others.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
Honestly, it's not. I'm 49 and I've heard of it but nothing more... I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. I don't recall having heard it mentioned for, I dunno, 10 years or so? If Heathener is half my age then never having heard of it is completely plausible.
I'm in my late fifties and barely remember it.
Perhaps because we don't really see many repeats of it.
I never watched it first time round - I was either a soerm or a foetus, not sure, maybe a child, who knows, but I was trawling through iPlayer and looking g for things I hadn’t watched, was bored of films and samey series on streams and saw it and thought “this is the sort of shot my parents watched - must be crap - give it a go”. It was witty, fun, sexy, nuanced. It reflects l life as it was rather than how commissioners wanted it to be.
It’s very funny if you can get over it being about privileged people and enjoy it for what it is.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
Correction: there is a LD candidate in Rotherham of course. Someone posted one of those crappy twitter images which cut the bottom off. Won't rely on that poster again.
I though Flynn did best. Rayner took no nonsense and didn't make any major gaffe. Penny played a hospital pass badly, she should have stayed clear of the £2000 nonsense. Daisy good but shouting, Denya a bit anonymous like the PC guy. Farage repeating the same old crap in the same old way, not getting much support from the audience.
I can't see it shifting things much. Brave of Mordaunt to turn up at all to defend the indefensible.
You have zero ability to separate your feelings about Brexit from the debate you just saw.
I don't think I have ever concealed my dislike and contempt for Farage.
He is a mouthy pub boor who has never done anything useful in his life, just criticised others.
That's irrelevant. You were purporting to be giving commentary about who 'did best', not who you would invite to a family barbeque.
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
In two minds about that one, as someone who doesn’t want to see personal freedom and economic growth strangled by an ideological anti-car agenda, but also believes in devolution of as many powers as possible to local authorities rather than central government.
It’s simple really, devolve as many powers as possible and then trust the voters to discern the correct course. Local politicians should make the case and win or lose on merit. Central government should ensure that it does the things only it can do and does them well. End of.
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
The Caledonian brewery in Edinburgh. Closed in 2022.
"What's that smell?" was a question every Edinburgh student asked in the first few months they lived there.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 10m Tory HQ desperately shovelling out the entire manifesto tonight to try and move the agenda on from D-Day is a further example of the chaos inside the campaign.
Yet no proposed IHT cut, despite Reform now raising the IHT threshold to £2 million?
A Stamp Duty cut for a few first time buyers isn't going to make any significant difference to Tory voteshare.
If that is all Sunak and Hunt have bring back Theresa May I say, at least she managed to write a manifesto that got the Tories over 40% and over 300 seats not heading for near wipeout!
There are a lot of people who are also Tory voters, me for example (ok I can’t vote) who have issues about inheritance tax being cut.
A lot of Tory voters, or target voters, have worked their bollocks off but also mixed with people who haven’t, their friends and associates have pocketed money without any effort. They see very very stupid friends walking out with millions without any skills or brains and there is a British, and Danish, thing where people aren’t happy with people flashing it without earning it.
I have many friends who’ve inherited serious millions, some have worked hard to prove themselves worthy, some have been determined to use the money as a platform to outperform, some have used the money to do good, some are lazy fuckers who have no clue - and every time the ones who are the latter are the ones who treat waiters terribly, are entitled, have no direction or fear of what comes next.
There has to be an inheritance tax so nobody can just not contribute. Some wise soul said, I want to leave them enough to do something but not enough to do nothing.
A lot of people don’t understand that without a successful society arounfpd them, a stable society, their properties would be worthless, their shares worthless etc.
It’s not money the inheritors strived for and it was on the back of millions of people who struggled but accepted an unequal society. There needs to be a balance otherwise the ones who have nothing stop tolerating the others.
I am not saying there should be not inheritance tax at all, though 55% say it should be abolished completely but certainly the threshold should be raised to £2million+ in my view so only the very richest pay that.
65% of voters and 77% of Tory voters back raising the threshold above £325k
A rate of 20 or 25% with a lower exempt amount would quite possibly bring in more than IHT currently does.
At £2m or so they're already evading or avoiding IHT so HYUFD's suggestion is about as useful as a chocolate welding torch.
Property tends to be the big crunch for going over thresholds and people get attached to family homes. So I tend to think that there should be a relatively high rate, low threshold but with a carve out for one property. Provided you live in it for five years. Sell it within that time and the taxman comes knocking.
No good; that merely pampers Tory voters in the Home Counties as opposed to Labour voters in Sedgefield and drives up the hotspot around London*. I'm coming round to the idea of abolishing IHT and imposing CGT on all inheritances - everyone has an allowance, and so on.
*Which is why HYUFD loves it, not entirely irrationally for him.
Abolish Inheritance Tax altogether and simply tax all inheritances as income.
Anyone working for a living shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone inheriting one.
They aren't, the IHT rate of 40% over £325k inherited is the same as the higher rate of income tax and higher than the basic rate of income tax.
Only the additional rate of tax for those earning over £125k (ie effectively the top 1% of earners) is above that at 45%
I don't think you understand this very well.
If you inherit £30k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £30k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £100k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £100k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £325k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £325k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £1mn, what tax do you pay? If you earn £1mn, what tax do you pay?
Working for your income shouldn't be taxed more than getting your income through other means, yet we tax someone who earns £32.5k more than we tax someone who inherits £325k.
We need to tax income less, and unearned incomes more.
No we don't as if you earn £32k you pay the basic rate of income tax of 20% whereas if you inherit £325k+ you pay 40% on that (unless you benefit from the Osborne exemption as your inheritance was from your parents who were married and their family home was less than £1 million)
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
Honestly, it's not. I'm 49 and I've heard of it but nothing more... I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. I don't recall having heard it mentioned for, I dunno, 10 years or so? If Heathener is half my age then never having heard of it is completely plausible.
I'm in my late fifties and barely remember it.
Perhaps because we don't really see many repeats of it.
I never watched it first time round - I was either a soerm or a foetus, not sure, maybe a child, who knows, but I was trawling through iPlayer and looking g for things I hadn’t watched, was bored of films and samey series on streams and saw it and thought “this is the sort of shot my parents watched - must be crap - give it a go”. It was witty, fun, sexy, nuanced. It reflects l life as it was rather than how commissioners wanted it to be.
It’s very funny if you can get over it being about privileged people and enjoy it for what it is.
It had the advantage of some of the best comedy actors of the period, well cast and scripted.
Part of the humour is the class conflict, and romantic attraction, between the impoverished aristocrat and the moneyed Czech refugee. Its a lot more positive about refugees than we would see nowadays, as indeed was Agatha Christie with Hercule Poirot.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
I though Flynn did best. Rayner took no nonsense and didn't make any major gaffe. Penny played a hospital pass badly, she should have stayed clear of the £2000 nonsense. Daisy good but shouting, Denya a bit anonymous like the PC guy. Farage repeating the same old crap in the same old way, not getting much support from the audience.
I can't see it shifting things much. Brave of Mordaunt to turn up at all to defend the indefensible.
You have zero ability to separate your feelings about Brexit from the debate you just saw.
I don't think I have ever concealed my dislike and contempt for Farage.
He is a mouthy pub boor who has never done anything useful in his life, just criticised others.
That's irrelevant. You were purporting to be giving commentary about who 'did best', not who you would invite to a family barbeque.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
The Caledonian brewery in Edinburgh. Closed in 2022.
"What's that smell?" was a question every Edinburgh student asked in the first few months they lived there.
The smell isn't the Caledonian Brewery, it's the North British Distillery mash tuns.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
For who? None of the alternatives in parliament would likely be doing much better.
They had a once in a generation charismatic general election winner in Boris, they ditched him and Tory MPs who did so will now likely mostly lose their seats as a result.
Much as once Labour ditched their once in a generation charismatic election winner in Blair it took them over a decade to get a general election winning leader again (and even now Starmer is no Blair charisma wise)
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 10m Tory HQ desperately shovelling out the entire manifesto tonight to try and move the agenda on from D-Day is a further example of the chaos inside the campaign.
Yet no proposed IHT cut, despite Reform now raising the IHT threshold to £2 million?
A Stamp Duty cut for a few first time buyers isn't going to make any significant difference to Tory voteshare.
If that is all Sunak and Hunt have bring back Theresa May I say, at least she managed to write a manifesto that got the Tories over 40% and over 300 seats not heading for near wipeout!
There are a lot of people who are also Tory voters, me for example (ok I can’t vote) who have issues about inheritance tax being cut.
A lot of Tory voters, or target voters, have worked their bollocks off but also mixed with people who haven’t, their friends and associates have pocketed money without any effort. They see very very stupid friends walking out with millions without any skills or brains and there is a British, and Danish, thing where people aren’t happy with people flashing it without earning it.
I have many friends who’ve inherited serious millions, some have worked hard to prove themselves worthy, some have been determined to use the money as a platform to outperform, some have used the money to do good, some are lazy fuckers who have no clue - and every time the ones who are the latter are the ones who treat waiters terribly, are entitled, have no direction or fear of what comes next.
There has to be an inheritance tax so nobody can just not contribute. Some wise soul said, I want to leave them enough to do something but not enough to do nothing.
A lot of people don’t understand that without a successful society arounfpd them, a stable society, their properties would be worthless, their shares worthless etc.
It’s not money the inheritors strived for and it was on the back of millions of people who struggled but accepted an unequal society. There needs to be a balance otherwise the ones who have nothing stop tolerating the others.
I am not saying there should be not inheritance tax at all, though 55% say it should be abolished completely but certainly the threshold should be raised to £2million+ in my view so only the very richest pay that.
65% of voters and 77% of Tory voters back raising the threshold above £325k
A rate of 20 or 25% with a lower exempt amount would quite possibly bring in more than IHT currently does.
At £2m or so they're already evading or avoiding IHT so HYUFD's suggestion is about as useful as a chocolate welding torch.
Property tends to be the big crunch for going over thresholds and people get attached to family homes. So I tend to think that there should be a relatively high rate, low threshold but with a carve out for one property. Provided you live in it for five years. Sell it within that time and the taxman comes knocking.
No good; that merely pampers Tory voters in the Home Counties as opposed to Labour voters in Sedgefield and drives up the hotspot around London*. I'm coming round to the idea of abolishing IHT and imposing CGT on all inheritances - everyone has an allowance, and so on.
*Which is why HYUFD loves it, not entirely irrationally for him.
Abolish Inheritance Tax altogether and simply tax all inheritances as income.
Anyone working for a living shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone inheriting one.
They aren't, the IHT rate of 40% over £325k inherited is the same as the higher rate of income tax and higher than the basic rate of income tax.
Only the additional rate of tax for those earning over £125k (ie effectively the top 1% of earners) is above that at 45%
I don't think you understand this very well.
If you inherit £30k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £30k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £100k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £100k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £325k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £325k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £1mn, what tax do you pay? If you earn £1mn, what tax do you pay?
Working for your income shouldn't be taxed more than getting your income through other means, yet we tax someone who earns £32.5k more than we tax someone who inherits £325k.
We need to tax income less, and unearned incomes more.
No we don't as if you earn £32k you pay the basic rate of income tax of 20% whereas if you inherit £325k+ you pay 40% on that (unless you benefit from the Osborne exemption as your inheritance was from your parents who were married and their family home was less than £1 million)
0/10 completely wrong.
If you earn £32,500 you pay £5,580 in tax on that (not even including employers NI levied on it).
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
I used to live a few doors away from Banks Brewery in Wolverhampton. A lovely sweet smell when they were malting. A great brewery tap pub too.
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
The Caledonian brewery in Edinburgh. Closed in 2022.
"What's that smell?" was a question every Edinburgh student asked in the first few months they lived there.
The smell isn't the Caledonian Brewery, it's the North British Distillery mash tuns.
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
I used to live a few doors away from Banks Brewery in Wolverhampton. A lovely sweet smell when they were malting. A great brewery tap pub too.
That does seem more appealing than the cellophane factory.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
He's doing better than Liz would'a done.
Your girl was that bad.
Thanks for that parallel universe prediction Mystic Meg. I think we can file that thought in the same bin with Sunak's political credibility, when even wet-as-an-otter's-pocket Matthew Parris is calling for him to go.
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
Honestly, it's not. I'm 49 and I've heard of it but nothing more... I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. I don't recall having heard it mentioned for, I dunno, 10 years or so? If Heathener is half my age then never having heard of it is completely plausible.
Which again, is my point. The stuff she comes out with on here ages her into the fifties. And yet she hasn’t even heard of a TV programme that had half the population watch its last episode and featured national treasure Penelope Keith. You admit to having heard of it. I rest my case.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
For who? None of the alternatives in parliament would likely be doing much better.
They had a once in a generation charismatic general election winner in Boris, they ditched him and Tory MPs who did so will now likely mostly lose their seats as a result.
Much as once Labour ditched their once in a generation charismatic election winner in Blair it took them over a decade to get a general election winning leader again (and even now Starmer is no Blair charisma wise)
Yup. Boris would have at least forced a Hung Parliament. Even after Covid.
Heathener’s claim to have never heard of “To The Manor Born” is like that scene from Inglorious Basterds where the spy outs himself as non-German with the wrong hand gesture.
Honestly, it's not. I'm 49 and I've heard of it but nothing more... I couldn't tell you a single thing about it. I don't recall having heard it mentioned for, I dunno, 10 years or so? If Heathener is half my age then never having heard of it is completely plausible.
I'm in my late fifties and barely remember it.
Perhaps because we don't really see many repeats of it.
I never watched it first time round - I was either a soerm or a foetus, not sure, maybe a child, who knows, but I was trawling through iPlayer and looking g for things I hadn’t watched, was bored of films and samey series on streams and saw it and thought “this is the sort of shot my parents watched - must be crap - give it a go”. It was witty, fun, sexy, nuanced. It reflects l life as it was rather than how commissioners wanted it to be.
It’s very funny if you can get over it being about privileged people and enjoy it for what it is.
I'm 49 and know it well. I've probably only seen three or four episodes but I know what the premise is and who the characters are and what the style of humour is and what it reflects about the expectations of the time it was set. But I could also say the same about Dad's Army, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Love Thy Neighbour, No Place Like Home, Porridge, I Never Knew You Cared, Ever Decreasing Circles, Butterflies, etc, etc. And most of them were from, well, if not long before I was born (mid 70s), certainly long before I was watching anything after Blue Peter. If you don't have a working knowledge of sitcoms from the golden age - are you even British? I'm only half joking. For 20 years, sitcoms, more than any other art form - more even than pop music - were the most catholic of British art forms, saying more about the state of the nation than any novel or play or film. They seemed to suit the British temperament perfectly. All gone now, alas, along with linear telly. I mean, I'm sure British sitcoms still exist. But you can breeze through life now in total ignorance of them in a way which simply wouldn't have been the case 40-50 years ago.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
For who? None of the alternatives in parliament would likely be doing much better.
They had a once in a generation charismatic general election winner in Boris, they ditched him and Tory MPs who did so will now likely mostly lose their seats as a result.
Much as once Labour ditched their once in a generation charismatic election winner in Blair it took them over a decade to get a general election winning leader again (and even now Starmer is no Blair charisma wise)
Even in the unlikely event that a new leader had failed to stage some sort of polling recovery, they still would not have thrown the party into an early election so they could head to Santa Monica before their green card expired. So at least Tory MPs would have had a few more months in gainful employment.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
For who? None of the alternatives in parliament would likely be doing much better.
They had a once in a generation charismatic general election winner in Boris, they ditched him and Tory MPs who did so will now likely mostly lose their seats as a result.
Much as once Labour ditched their once in a generation charismatic election winner in Blair it took them a generation to get a general election winning leader again (and even now Starmer is no Blair charisma wise)
Boris wouldn’t be winning this election, and who knows what other moral failures he would have been exposed as having been party to had he stayed. Tories were well shot, their problem was the messy way they had to get rid of a liability and then screwing the leadership election
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
The Caledonian brewery in Edinburgh. Closed in 2022.
"What's that smell?" was a question every Edinburgh student asked in the first few months they lived there.
The smell isn't the Caledonian Brewery, it's the North British Distillery mash tuns.
Ah, you're right!
Not quite right - I meant the wash backs (silly me forgetting my whisky production).
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
For who? None of the alternatives in parliament would likely be doing much better.
They had a once in a generation charismatic general election winner in Boris, they ditched him and Tory MPs who did so will now likely mostly lose their seats as a result.
Much as once Labour ditched their once in a generation charismatic election winner in Blair it took them a generation to get a general election winning leader again (and even now Starmer is no Blair charisma wise)
Boris wouldn’t be winning this election, and who knows what other moral failures he would have been exposed as having been party to had he stayed. Tories were well shot, their problem was the messy way they had to get rid of a liability and then screwing the leadership election
Boris would be getting 200 seats plus at least and Reform would not be polling 15%.
Most of Boris' voters now voting Reform didn't give a toss about partygate anyway anymore than most Trump voters couldn't give a toss about the Stormy Daniels case
FWIW I'm in my 20s, but love old british sitcoms ('Allo 'Allo, Dad's Army, Yes Minister, Porridge, Blackadder) and have never heard of To The Manor Born.
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
HP sauce near to Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant but very pervasive. I believe the factory is closed now.
A smell that used to be everywhere but has almost disappeared is coal smoke.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
For who? None of the alternatives in parliament would likely be doing much better.
They had a once in a generation charismatic general election winner in Boris, they ditched him and Tory MPs who did so will now likely mostly lose their seats as a result.
Much as once Labour ditched their once in a generation charismatic election winner in Blair it took them a generation to get a general election winning leader again (and even now Starmer is no Blair charisma wise)
Boris wouldn’t be winning this election, and who knows what other moral failures he would have been exposed as having been party to had he stayed. Tories were well shot, their problem was the messy way they had to get rid of a liability and then screwing the leadership election
Not to mention that Boris or the organ grinder purged and banished a disproportionately brainy cabal for Brexit heresy. Highlighted when the options for Chancellor ran to such political geniuses as... Nadhim Zahawi and ... Rishi Sunak.
FWIW I'm in my 20s, but love old british sitcoms ('Allo 'Allo, Porridge, Blackadder) and have never heard of To The Manor Born.
It's OK. Not top tier imo. Penelope Keith basically reprises her role as Nargot Leadbetter, reimagined as an aristocrat forced to move into the Dower House.
FWIW I'm in my 20s, but love old british sitcoms ('Allo 'Allo, Porridge, Blackadder) and have never heard of To The Manor Born.
It's not the kind of quoteable, and thus clippable, comedy like Porridge and Blackadder (I'm lukewarm at best when it comes to 'Allo 'Allo), so perhaps it has not aged as well.
FWIW I'm in my 20s, but love old british sitcoms ('Allo 'Allo, Dad's Army, Yes Minister, Porridge, Blackadder) and have never heard of To The Manor Born.
Have you heard of that expression? I have, but haven't watched the programme.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 10m Tory HQ desperately shovelling out the entire manifesto tonight to try and move the agenda on from D-Day is a further example of the chaos inside the campaign.
Yet no proposed IHT cut, despite Reform now raising the IHT threshold to £2 million?
A Stamp Duty cut for a few first time buyers isn't going to make any significant difference to Tory voteshare.
If that is all Sunak and Hunt have bring back Theresa May I say, at least she managed to write a manifesto that got the Tories over 40% and over 300 seats not heading for near wipeout!
There are a lot of people who are also Tory voters, me for example (ok I can’t vote) who have issues about inheritance tax being cut.
A lot of Tory voters, or target voters, have worked their bollocks off but also mixed with people who haven’t, their friends and associates have pocketed money without any effort. They see very very stupid friends walking out with millions without any skills or brains and there is a British, and Danish, thing where people aren’t happy with people flashing it without earning it.
I have many friends who’ve inherited serious millions, some have worked hard to prove themselves worthy, some have been determined to use the money as a platform to outperform, some have used the money to do good, some are lazy fuckers who have no clue - and every time the ones who are the latter are the ones who treat waiters terribly, are entitled, have no direction or fear of what comes next.
There has to be an inheritance tax so nobody can just not contribute. Some wise soul said, I want to leave them enough to do something but not enough to do nothing.
A lot of people don’t understand that without a successful society arounfpd them, a stable society, their properties would be worthless, their shares worthless etc.
It’s not money the inheritors strived for and it was on the back of millions of people who struggled but accepted an unequal society. There needs to be a balance otherwise the ones who have nothing stop tolerating the others.
I am not saying there should be not inheritance tax at all, though 55% say it should be abolished completely but certainly the threshold should be raised to £2million+ in my view so only the very richest pay that.
65% of voters and 77% of Tory voters back raising the threshold above £325k
A rate of 20 or 25% with a lower exempt amount would quite possibly bring in more than IHT currently does.
At £2m or so they're already evading or avoiding IHT so HYUFD's suggestion is about as useful as a chocolate welding torch.
Property tends to be the big crunch for going over thresholds and people get attached to family homes. So I tend to think that there should be a relatively high rate, low threshold but with a carve out for one property. Provided you live in it for five years. Sell it within that time and the taxman comes knocking.
No good; that merely pampers Tory voters in the Home Counties as opposed to Labour voters in Sedgefield and drives up the hotspot around London*. I'm coming round to the idea of abolishing IHT and imposing CGT on all inheritances - everyone has an allowance, and so on.
*Which is why HYUFD loves it, not entirely irrationally for him.
Abolish Inheritance Tax altogether and simply tax all inheritances as income.
Anyone working for a living shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone inheriting one.
They aren't, the IHT rate of 40% over £325k inherited is the same as the higher rate of income tax and higher than the basic rate of income tax.
Only the additional rate of tax for those earning over £125k (ie effectively the top 1% of earners) is above that at 45%
I don't think you understand this very well.
If you inherit £30k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £30k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £100k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £100k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £325k, what tax do you pay? If you earn £325k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £1mn, what tax do you pay? If you earn £1mn, what tax do you pay?
Working for your income shouldn't be taxed more than getting your income through other means, yet we tax someone who earns £32.5k more than we tax someone who inherits £325k.
We need to tax income less, and unearned incomes more.
No we don't as if you earn £32k you pay the basic rate of income tax of 20% whereas if you inherit £325k+ you pay 40% on that (unless you benefit from the Osborne exemption as your inheritance was from your parents who were married and their family home was less than £1 million)
0/10 completely wrong.
If you earn £32,500 you pay £5,580 in tax on that (not even including employers NI levied on it).
If you inherit £325,000 you pay £0.00 in tax.
£5,580 > £0.00
I said 325k+, if you inherit £500,000 you pay £70,000 in inheritance tax ie almost 15 times what you pay in income tax on £32.5k
Just anecdotally looking at most of the constituencies near me and there seem to be a lot more candidates than usual, anywhere from 6-9 in seats which have had 4-5 in the past.
Hopefully a good sign of engagement, and with any luck I am wrong in expecting turnout to be considerably down.
FWIW I'm in my 20s, but love old british sitcoms ('Allo 'Allo, Dad's Army, Yes Minister, Porridge, Blackadder) and have never heard of To The Manor Born.
Have you heard of that expression? I have, but haven't watched the programme.
Heard it a couple times but to be honest assumed it was an old idiom/saying.
Hang on. Has this all been a 9,000 dimensional chess game engineered by Dom? A Seldon crisis upon which he will reappear to resolve it necessarily in favour of the Conservative Party?
FWIW I'm in my 20s, but love old british sitcoms ('Allo 'Allo, Porridge, Blackadder) and have never heard of To The Manor Born.
It's OK. Not top tier imo. Penelope Keith basically reprises her role as Nargot Leadbetter, reimagined as an aristocrat forced to move into the Dower House.
We used to have so many good sitcoms that even the second tier ones were worth watching and sometimes had more charm.
FWIW I'm in my 20s, but love old british sitcoms ('Allo 'Allo, Dad's Army, Yes Minister, Porridge, Blackadder) and have never heard of To The Manor Born.
Interesting article in the Times about "olfactory heritage".
Anyone who has grown up near a steelworks, a brewery or the sea understands the time-travelling power of smell. The power of a sudden and unexpected whiff of the past to recreate instantly a scene from childhood: football on a rutted field in the shadow of some belching factory, or for seaside dwellers the sulphurous odour of decomposing seaweed during a shoreline amble for flotsam. Brains are repositories for smells long banished from daily life by progress: the leather interior of a Morris Minor, the chemical intensity of a typewriter ribbon or the golden fullness of pies made freshly on the premises.
For me the two places where I think of smell more than anything else is Bridgwater and the old cellophane factory and Warrington and the smell of soap from Lever Brothers. Does anyone else have any now lost evocative smells?
The aromas in Burton-on-Trent certainly haven't passed into history yet. 😊
FWIW I'm in my 20s, but love old british sitcoms ('Allo 'Allo, Porridge, Blackadder) and have never heard of To The Manor Born.
It's not the kind of quoteable, and thus clippable, comedy like Porridge and Blackadder (I'm lukewarm at best when it comes to 'Allo 'Allo), so perhaps it has not aged as well.
I spent a lot of time in France when I was younger - so I assume that's where 'Allo 'Allo came from, used to love it when I was a child though.
Some of us did say quite consistently that Sunak was a dud, and strongly advised the wibbly wibbly Tory MPs who are now losing their jobs to ditch him whilst they could.
For who? None of the alternatives in parliament would likely be doing much better.
They had a once in a generation charismatic general election winner in Boris, they ditched him and Tory MPs who did so will now likely mostly lose their seats as a result.
Much as once Labour ditched their once in a generation charismatic election winner in Blair it took them a generation to get a general election winning leader again (and even now Starmer is no Blair charisma wise)
Boris wouldn’t be winning this election, and who knows what other moral failures he would have been exposed as having been party to had he stayed. Tories were well shot, their problem was the messy way they had to get rid of a liability and then screwing the leadership election
Boris would be getting 200 seats plus at least and Reform would not be polling 15%.
Most of Boris' voters now voting Reform didn't give a toss about partygate anyway anymore than most Trump voters couldn't give a toss about the Stormy Daniels case
You may well be right, however political leaders shouldn’t misguidedly follow voters into a morally bankrupt position. It’s their duty to uphold a minimum standard. The world will be a terrible place if we insist on having a high standard for anyone we disagree with and a lower standard for anyone on our side.
'Allo 'Allo is definitely not best experienced through a binge watch as I saw it, as there's way more episodes than you probably remember, and the repeated gags will wear considerably if you splurge through seasons at a time.
Comments
New: Conservatives pledge a ‘Backing Drivers Bill’ which would unilaterally reverse the Ulez expansion *and* intervene to restrict councils/Welsh govt on 20mph zones/LTNs - basically, getting Westminster to overturn local and devolved government.
https://x.com/peterwalker99/status/1799192958241280064?s=46
Only the additional rate of tax for those earning over £125k (ie effectively the top 1% of earners) is above that at 45%
The Daily Telegraph by the people who remember the country as it used to be run. The Express by people who think the country is still being run that way.
One of those strange routines that passed through a whole generation of comics. Everyone knows the Yes, Minister version, but it looks like it originally goes back to a TUC President from the 1970s.
https://www.dirtyfeed.org/2021/04/what-the-papers-say/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0GGndnnOqw&t=70s
Hopefully Big G doesn’t fall for it.
If you inherit £30k, what tax do you pay?
If you earn £30k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £100k, what tax do you pay?
If you earn £100k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £325k, what tax do you pay?
If you earn £325k, what tax do you pay?
If you inherit £1mn, what tax do you pay?
If you earn £1mn, what tax do you pay?
Working for your income shouldn't be taxed more than getting your income through other means, yet we tax someone who earns £32.5k more than we tax someone who inherits £325k.
We need to tax income less, and unearned incomes more.
(Part of me thinks, you know... propose all this dreck, then it can get rejected at the ballot box. But it is pretty dismal.)
The conclusion was that the 3D scanning was great for meaning you don't need to remove electronic, but that the methods used to identify liquids where not accurate enough yet. (They work by having XRays at two slightly different wavelengths, and then measure absorption rates of each of the two. By measuring the difference, you can be *reasonably* accurate, but it's far from foolproof currently.)
Hopefully it will have the National Service effect and kill the idea forever.
I though Flynn did best. Rayner took no nonsense and didn't make any major gaffe. Penny played a hospital pass badly, she should have stayed clear of the £2000 nonsense. Daisy good but shouting, Denya a bit anonymous like the PC guy. Farage repeating the same old crap in the same old way, not getting much support from the audience.
I can't see it shifting things much. Brave of Mordaunt to turn up at all to defend the indefensible.
https://x.com/historyinmemes/status/1798691306983616814
9/10 of your posts are complete IEA-fantasy-deregulate-the-fuck-out-of-everything bullshit
And then 1/10 times, you manage to completely nail it.
This is one of those posts.
It's so bloody obvious - and so easy to implement.
If you were standing as my elected representative with that as your signature policy, I'd find it genuinely hard not to vote for you.
And you know who Penelope Keith is, right?
If not, perhaps, Peter Bowles.
I think it suggests that Heathener is surely under 40 which is fine, but other aspects of the Heathener persona - “I take the Sunday Telegraph” - suggest otherwise.
Perhaps because we don't really see many repeats of it.
The 20s Plenty campaign has the backing of over 150 parish councils and campaigners met at County Hall in Northallerton yesterday with several making passionate pleas about why they want action on speeding now.
Farage 25%
Rayner 19%
None of the above 14%
https://x.com/luketryl/status/1799203206553080254
He is a mouthy pub boor who has never done anything useful in his life, just criticised others.
Next weeks polls : Tories 20, Reform 20.
It’s very funny if you can get over it being about privileged people and enjoy it for what it is.
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1799203206553080254
"What's that smell?" was a question every Edinburgh student asked in the first few months they lived there.
Part of the humour is the class conflict, and romantic attraction, between the impoverished aristocrat and the moneyed Czech refugee. Its a lot more positive about refugees than we would see nowadays, as indeed was Agatha Christie with Hercule Poirot.
Your girl was that bad.
They had a once in a generation charismatic general election winner in Boris, they ditched him and Tory MPs who did so will now likely mostly lose their seats as a result.
Much as once Labour ditched their once in a generation charismatic election winner in Blair it took them over a decade to get a general election winning leader again (and even now Starmer is no Blair charisma wise)
If you earn £32,500 you pay £5,580 in tax on that (not even including employers NI levied on it).
If you inherit £325,000 you pay £0.00 in tax.
£5,580 > £0.00
b) Kaz Rizvi is standing for the Tories!
In passing, there seems to be two pro-Gaza candidates, Leanne Mohamad (Ind.), and Shabaz Hussein (Workers' Party)
https://www.wokingham.gov.uk/sites/wokingham/files/2024-06/Statement of Persons Nominated - Notice of Poll Situation of Polling Stations for Earley and Woodley constituency.pdf
No RefUK candidate in Maidenhead.
https://vote-2012.proboards.com/post/1499365/thread
But I could also say the same about Dad's Army, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Love Thy Neighbour, No Place Like Home, Porridge, I Never Knew You Cared, Ever Decreasing Circles, Butterflies, etc, etc. And most of them were from, well, if not long before I was born (mid 70s), certainly long before I was watching anything after Blue Peter.
If you don't have a working knowledge of sitcoms from the golden age - are you even British? I'm only half joking. For 20 years, sitcoms, more than any other art form - more even than pop music - were the most catholic of British art forms, saying more about the state of the nation than any novel or play or film. They seemed to suit the British temperament perfectly. All gone now, alas, along with linear telly. I mean, I'm sure British sitcoms still exist. But you can breeze through life now in total ignorance of them in a way which simply wouldn't have been the case 40-50 years ago.
Most of Boris' voters now voting Reform didn't give a toss about partygate anyway anymore than most Trump voters couldn't give a toss about the Stormy Daniels case
A smell that used to be everywhere but has almost disappeared is coal smoke.
Hopefully a good sign of engagement, and with any luck I am wrong in expecting turnout to be considerably down.
https://x.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1798832580713746890?s=46&t=L9g_woCIqbo1MTuBFCK0xg
Don't forget 'Super 4th Saturday before election polling' tomorrow 👍