When parliament reconvenes he's going to get his supporters to protest outside parliament isn't he?
🚨 ELECTION INTERFERENCE ALERT 🚨
Today's Mail on Sunday claimed President Zelensky said that I was personally infected with Putinism. This is totally untrue and I have instructed Carter Ruck to deal with it.
Tomorrow’s Daily Mail are so desperate to smear Reform that they have now contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and goaded them into a supposed quote from someone in Sergey Lavrov’s office calling me an ‘ally’.
That a UK newspaper group is actively collaborating with the Kremlin to protect their dying Conservative party is an absolute scandal. The British people will see through this act of utter desperation.
One, if Farage is angry he is being painted as parroting Putin talking points perhaps he should stop doing it.
Two, isn't hiring Carter Ruck essentially an admission the thing you've been accused of is true, but you hope they will be able to intimidate people into withdrawing?
Yes, Carter Ruck presumably still make good money but their brand hasn’t had a good 12 months.
Carter Ruck's brand hasn't been good for 30 odd years - it's the byline for a dodgy libel claim...
Careful you might end up with Carter Ruck coming for you ;-)
I love Carter Ruck, always have. If I ever become famous, rich, and a scumbag, I would be honoured if they would have me for a client.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
The VAT registration threshold is a big and known problem though. The only solution is either to increase it massively, so most small-mid sized businesses are outside (but at a significant cost to the exchequer) or lower it substantially. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner with the current threshold.
Actually the most likely policy response because it’s the least politically risky will be freezing the threshold until inflation catches up: fiscal drag.
But then people, likea relation, doing some part time tutoring while at university, simply won't bother as it isn't worth the hassle/risk of being a collection agency for the treasury.
And with 20% stuck on hourly rate, less parents will hire anyway.
So less tax take (noting the combined tutoring (self empl) /summer holiday job means that she has to file a tax return and will pay some tax and NI this year. Which wouldn't be the case if she plugholed the tutoring.
If she is earning over £1000 she should be registered with HMRC....
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
The VAT registration threshold is a big and known problem though. The only solution is either to increase it massively, so most small-mid sized businesses are outside (but at a significant cost to the exchequer) or lower it substantially. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner with the current threshold.
Actually the most likely policy response because it’s the least politically risky will be freezing the threshold until inflation catches up: fiscal drag.
But then people, likea relation, doing some part time tutoring while at university, simply won't bother as it isn't worth the hassle/risk of being a collection agency for the treasury.
And with 20% stuck on hourly rate, less parents will hire anyway.
So less tax take (noting the combined tutoring (self empl) /summer holiday job means that she has to file a tax return and will pay some tax and NI this year. Which wouldn't be the case if she plugholed the tutoring.
The problem at the moment is that full time self employed people are turning down work to avoid triggering the threshold. The stats are ridiculous.
So either you drop it so that all trades are registered. Or you increase it to something like £250k. Current level is worst of all worlds.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000....
Because that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided.
So even more people think Fuck it, pack it in and do 16 hours a week at Tesco on minimum wage, pay no tax, and claim more off fewer remaining taxpayers in Universal Credit.
Fair enough - but once you children hit 16, you discover that living on universal credit without children to bump up what you receive is not a good idea.
But clearly you don't understand why most EU countries have reduced the threshold over the years and I can't be bothered to explain that most people actually want a half decent standard of living so the go and work at Tesco stage doesn't last that long...
18 not 16 in most cases. You identify correctly tbe horrible poverty trap that Tax Credits now UC offers for tbose with children.
As much as a full time job for working 16 hours a week. But then it ends overnight and your CV is useless.
Especially as with millions hapily on 16-24 hours a week with little if any employers NI, McTesco dont offer much that isn't 16-24 hours a week at near minimum wage, so few full time McJobs anyway.
Few think years ahead though. This is of course why long term sick UC claims have rocketed in recent years as peoples kids turn 18.
You have to make work pay, that means less tax and less complex paperwork and regulation at the lower end.
Big corporations hate that though as it undercuts them.
Farage gets it though. As do his "white van man" supporters.
Farage only gets it because he hasn't got a budget to balance - if he had he wouldn't be making economically insane policies up.
Basically the only argument I can see here is - the VAT threshold should match the point at which you register for self employment because anything else is going to create issues. Which is not what you want but is the logical conclusion to your argument...
That is £1,000 turnover. £80 a month.
Yep and as of April 2026 - details need to be sent electronically to HMRC (which is why Natwest bought FreeAgent to give away to their customers).
Hence charging and collecting VAT is about to become no more difficult than what anyone self employed is going to have to do anyway...
When parliament reconvenes he's going to get his supporters to protest outside parliament isn't he?
🚨 ELECTION INTERFERENCE ALERT 🚨
Today's Mail on Sunday claimed President Zelensky said that I was personally infected with Putinism. This is totally untrue and I have instructed Carter Ruck to deal with it.
Tomorrow’s Daily Mail are so desperate to smear Reform that they have now contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and goaded them into a supposed quote from someone in Sergey Lavrov’s office calling me an ‘ally’.
That a UK newspaper group is actively collaborating with the Kremlin to protect their dying Conservative party is an absolute scandal. The British people will see through this act of utter desperation.
One, if Farage is angry he is being painted as parroting Putin talking points perhaps he should stop doing it.
Two, isn't hiring Carter Ruck essentially an admission the thing you've been accused of is true, but you hope they will be able to intimidate people into withdrawing?
Yes, Carter Ruck presumably still make good money but their brand hasn’t had a good 12 months.
Carter Ruck's brand hasn't been good for 30 odd years - it's the byline for a dodgy libel claim...
Vague memories from Private Eye of Carter Ruck having a notable record of losing libel cases.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
The VAT registration threshold is a big and known problem though. The only solution is either to increase it massively, so most small-mid sized businesses are outside (but at a significant cost to the exchequer) or lower it substantially. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner with the current threshold.
Actually the most likely policy response because it’s the least politically risky will be freezing the threshold until inflation catches up: fiscal drag.
But then people, likea relation, doing some part time tutoring while at university, simply won't bother as it isn't worth the hassle/risk of being a collection agency for the treasury.
And with 20% stuck on hourly rate, less parents will hire anyway.
So less tax take (noting the combined tutoring (self empl) /summer holiday job means that she has to file a tax return and will pay some tax and NI this year. Which wouldn't be the case if she plugholed the tutoring.
The problem at the moment is that full time self employed people are turning down work to avoid triggering the threshold. The stats are ridiculous.
So either you drop it so that all trades are registered. Or you increase it to something like £250k. Current level is worst of all worlds.
If you are going to take in everybody then you'd better have a good way of stopping 'cash in hand'.
So why is Marine Le Pen doing a Nazi salute in the picture?
This time next week I shall be in France watching horrified frenchies bewailing the depths to which their country is plunging,
Ive brought a crate of Nyetimber out to enjoy it.
You'll be disappointed. I've seldom seen France as crowded and lively as it is now. Certainly I've never known the south as busy as it is this July. You'll melt (at least you would if you weren't engrossed in spreadsheets).
Roger my son lives off the Place de la Republique which is where lots of the leftie demos start ( you'd love it !) he says its getting progressively nuts as the days roll on. So crowded and lively yes, but thats how riots start. I'd expect an explosion of sorts Sunday night when the results start rolling in.
Anyway I'll be up North near Versailles, my main worry is rain on Satrurday not frying
Congratulations! That's just what France is short of. A beach-body ready Irishman. The girth of the girls here is considerably less than in the UK as I'm sure you'll notice. Your son's a lucky man! Incidentally there's a Place de la Republique in most places-I have an apartment in one in Villefranche-but I guess you are talking about the one in Paris?
Anyway if you haven't been for a while you'll be impressed by the way the locals look after themselves. Have a great wedding and trust me you'll get to love the French!
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
The VAT registration threshold is a big and known problem though. The only solution is either to increase it massively, so most small-mid sized businesses are outside (but at a significant cost to the exchequer) or lower it substantially. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner with the current threshold.
Actually the most likely policy response because it’s the least politically risky will be freezing the threshold until inflation catches up: fiscal drag.
But then people, likea relation, doing some part time tutoring while at university, simply won't bother as it isn't worth the hassle/risk of being a collection agency for the treasury.
And with 20% stuck on hourly rate, less parents will hire anyway.
So less tax take (noting the combined tutoring (self empl) /summer holiday job means that she has to file a tax return and will pay some tax and NI this year. Which wouldn't be the case if she plugholed the tutoring.
The problem at the moment is that full time self employed people are turning down work to avoid triggering the threshold. The stats are ridiculous.
So either you drop it so that all trades are registered. Or you increase it to something like £250k. Current level is worst of all worlds.
If you are going to take in everybody then you'd better have a good way of stopping 'cash in hand'.
Yes, MTD plus more admin resources for HMRC.
We have one of the smallest tax gaps in the developed world. HMRC do a pretty good job. But the grey economy still exists and digitisation is the solution.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000....
Because that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided.
So even more people think Fuck it, pack it in and do 16 hours a week at Tesco on minimum wage, pay no tax, and claim more off fewer remaining taxpayers in Universal Credit.
Fair enough - but once you children hit 16, you discover that living on universal credit without children to bump up what you receive is not a good idea.
But clearly you don't understand why most EU countries have reduced the threshold over the years and I can't be bothered to explain that most people actually want a half decent standard of living so the go and work at Tesco stage doesn't last that long...
18 not 16 in most cases. You identify correctly tbe horrible poverty trap that Tax Credits now UC offers for tbose with children.
As much as a full time job for working 16 hours a week. But then it ends overnight and your CV is useless.
Especially as with millions hapily on 16-24 hours a week with little if any employers NI, McTesco dont offer much that isn't 16-24 hours a week at near minimum wage, so few full time McJobs anyway.
Few think years ahead though. This is of course why long term sick UC claims have rocketed in recent years as peoples kids turn 18.
You have to make work pay, that means less tax and less complex paperwork and regulation at the lower end.
Big corporations hate that though as it undercuts them.
Farage gets it though. As do his "white van man" supporters.
Farage only gets it because he hasn't got a budget to balance - if he had he wouldn't be making economically insane policies up.
Basically the only argument I can see here is - the VAT threshold should match the point at which you register for self employment because anything else is going to create issues. Which is not what you want but is the logical conclusion to your argument...
That is £1,000 turnover. £80 a month.
Yep and as of April 2026 - details need to be sent electronically to HMRC (which is why Natwest bought FreeAgent to give away to their customers).
Hence charging and collecting VAT is about to become no more difficult than what anyone self employed is going to have to do anyway...
Which means the everything else will become as much hassle as collecting vat so she will probably pull the plug on it as not worth the hassle, so less revenue for HMRC.
Plus there is the matter of having to set aside and save 20% of turnover to pay the VAT rather than having the small amount of income tax due for her combined employment and self employment dealt with in her tax code.
You seem unable to grasp that the more you increase the hassle and cost of working, the less work is done and the less the treasury gets.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000....
Because that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided.
So even more people think Fuck it, pack it in and do 16 hours a week at Tesco on minimum wage, pay no tax, and claim more off fewer remaining taxpayers in Universal Credit.
Fair enough - but once you children hit 16, you discover that living on universal credit without children to bump up what you receive is not a good idea.
But clearly you don't understand why most EU countries have reduced the threshold over the years and I can't be bothered to explain that most people actually want a half decent standard of living so the go and work at Tesco stage doesn't last that long...
18 not 16 in most cases. You identify correctly tbe horrible poverty trap that Tax Credits now UC offers for tbose with children.
As much as a full time job for working 16 hours a week. But then it ends overnight and your CV is useless.
Especially as with millions hapily on 16-24 hours a week with little if any employers NI, McTesco dont offer much that isn't 16-24 hours a week at near minimum wage, so few full time McJobs anyway.
Few think years ahead though. This is of course why long term sick UC claims have rocketed in recent years as peoples kids turn 18.
You have to make work pay, that means less tax and less complex paperwork and regulation at the lower end.
Big corporations hate that though as it undercuts them.
Farage gets it though. As do his "white van man" supporters.
Farage only gets it because he hasn't got a budget to balance - if he had he wouldn't be making economically insane policies up.
Basically the only argument I can see here is - the VAT threshold should match the point at which you register for self employment because anything else is going to create issues. Which is not what you want but is the logical conclusion to your argument...
That is £1,000 turnover. £80 a month.
Yep and as of April 2026 - details need to be sent electronically to HMRC (which is why Natwest bought FreeAgent to give away to their customers).
Hence charging and collecting VAT is about to become no more difficult than what anyone self employed is going to have to do anyway...
Is this "digital tax" business going to end up as yet another way to load costs disproportionately on to small businesses?
I do wonder what options there will be to fill in the forms.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
The VAT registration threshold is a big and known problem though. The only solution is either to increase it massively, so most small-mid sized businesses are outside (but at a significant cost to the exchequer) or lower it substantially. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner with the current threshold.
Actually the most likely policy response because it’s the least politically risky will be freezing the threshold until inflation catches up: fiscal drag.
But then people, likea relation, doing some part time tutoring while at university, simply won't bother as it isn't worth the hassle/risk of being a collection agency for the treasury.
And with 20% stuck on hourly rate, less parents will hire anyway.
So less tax take (noting the combined tutoring (self empl) /summer holiday job means that she has to file a tax return and will pay some tax and NI this year. Which wouldn't be the case if she plugholed the tutoring.
The problem at the moment is that full time self employed people are turning down work to avoid triggering the threshold. The stats are ridiculous.
So either you drop it so that all trades are registered. Or you increase it to something like £250k. Current level is worst of all worlds.
If you are going to take in everybody then you'd better have a good way of stopping 'cash in hand'.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000....
Because that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided.
So even more people think Fuck it, pack it in and do 16 hours a week at Tesco on minimum wage, pay no tax, and claim more off fewer remaining taxpayers in Universal Credit.
Fair enough - but once you children hit 16, you discover that living on universal credit without children to bump up what you receive is not a good idea.
But clearly you don't understand why most EU countries have reduced the threshold over the years and I can't be bothered to explain that most people actually want a half decent standard of living so the go and work at Tesco stage doesn't last that long...
18 not 16 in most cases. You identify correctly tbe horrible poverty trap that Tax Credits now UC offers for tbose with children.
As much as a full time job for working 16 hours a week. But then it ends overnight and your CV is useless.
Especially as with millions hapily on 16-24 hours a week with little if any employers NI, McTesco dont offer much that isn't 16-24 hours a week at near minimum wage, so few full time McJobs anyway.
Few think years ahead though. This is of course why long term sick UC claims have rocketed in recent years as peoples kids turn 18.
You have to make work pay, that means less tax and less complex paperwork and regulation at the lower end.
Big corporations hate that though as it undercuts them.
Farage gets it though. As do his "white van man" supporters.
Farage only gets it because he hasn't got a budget to balance - if he had he wouldn't be making economically insane policies up.
Basically the only argument I can see here is - the VAT threshold should match the point at which you register for self employment because anything else is going to create issues. Which is not what you want but is the logical conclusion to your argument...
That is £1,000 turnover. £80 a month.
Yep and as of April 2026 - details need to be sent electronically to HMRC (which is why Natwest bought FreeAgent to give away to their customers).
Hence charging and collecting VAT is about to become no more difficult than what anyone self employed is going to have to do anyway...
Which means the everything else will become as much hassle as collecting vat so she will probably pull the plug on it as not worth the hassle, so less revenue for HMRC.
Plus there is the matter of having to set aside and save 20% of turnover to pay the VAT rather than having the small amount of income tax due for her combined employment and self employment dealt with in her tax code.
You seem unable to grasp that the more you increase the hassle and cost of working, the less work is done and the less the treasury gets.
I take it you don't run a VAT registered business - it's takes me about 5 minutes a quarter to do the extra work required....
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
How do Norway, Denmark and Sweden all manage to survive having fucked their golden egg laying geese with VAT thresholds less than €10k?
With considerably less ease than they did when they built their economies on a non-socialist model, as we established last time you were cooing at your Denmark poster.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
The VAT registration threshold is a big and known problem though. The only solution is either to increase it massively, so most small-mid sized businesses are outside (but at a significant cost to the exchequer) or lower it substantially. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner with the current threshold.
Actually the most likely policy response because it’s the least politically risky will be freezing the threshold until inflation catches up: fiscal drag.
But then people, likea relation, doing some part time tutoring while at university, simply won't bother as it isn't worth the hassle/risk of being a collection agency for the treasury.
And with 20% stuck on hourly rate, less parents will hire anyway.
So less tax take (noting the combined tutoring (self empl) /summer holiday job means that she has to file a tax return and will pay some tax and NI this year. Which wouldn't be the case if she plugholed the tutoring.
The problem at the moment is that full time self employed people are turning down work to avoid triggering the threshold. The stats are ridiculous.
So either you drop it so that all trades are registered. Or you increase it to something like £250k. Current level is worst of all worlds.
Also because they get charged 42% or 47% Tax/NI and loose childcare subsidy at not much more than the VAT threshold so think, sod it, whats the point.
A communist, redistributive tax and benefits system results in communist country indolence and eventual bankruptcy of the state.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000....
Because that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided.
So even more people think Fuck it, pack it in and do 16 hours a week at Tesco on minimum wage, pay no tax, and claim more off fewer remaining taxpayers in Universal Credit.
Fair enough - but once you children hit 16, you discover that living on universal credit without children to bump up what you receive is not a good idea.
But clearly you don't understand why most EU countries have reduced the threshold over the years and I can't be bothered to explain that most people actually want a half decent standard of living so the go and work at Tesco stage doesn't last that long...
18 not 16 in most cases. You identify correctly tbe horrible poverty trap that Tax Credits now UC offers for tbose with children.
As much as a full time job for working 16 hours a week. But then it ends overnight and your CV is useless.
Especially as with millions hapily on 16-24 hours a week with little if any employers NI, McTesco dont offer much that isn't 16-24 hours a week at near minimum wage, so few full time McJobs anyway.
Few think years ahead though. This is of course why long term sick UC claims have rocketed in recent years as peoples kids turn 18.
You have to make work pay, that means less tax and less complex paperwork and regulation at the lower end.
Big corporations hate that though as it undercuts them.
Farage gets it though. As do his "white van man" supporters.
Farage only gets it because he hasn't got a budget to balance - if he had he wouldn't be making economically insane policies up.
Basically the only argument I can see here is - the VAT threshold should match the point at which you register for self employment because anything else is going to create issues. Which is not what you want but is the logical conclusion to your argument...
That is £1,000 turnover. £80 a month.
Yep and as of April 2026 - details need to be sent electronically to HMRC (which is why Natwest bought FreeAgent to give away to their customers).
Hence charging and collecting VAT is about to become no more difficult than what anyone self employed is going to have to do anyway...
Is this "digital tax" business going to end up as yet another way to load costs disproportionately on to small businesses?
I do wonder what options there will be to fill in the forms.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The corporations that lobby them don't like the competition.
I think it's time for Labour to weigh in against Farage. The way to do so is to highlight Farage's close association to Trump. Trump is so reviled that it may persuade some previous Red Wall Labour defectors, currently disillusioned with the Conservatives, to switch back to Labour rather than to try their luck with Reform.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
How do Norway, Denmark and Sweden all manage to survive having fucked their golden egg laying geese with VAT thresholds less than €10k?
With considerably less ease than they did when they built their economies on a non-socialist model, as we established last time you were cooing at your Denmark poster.
How does that work given that the rates for Norway, Denmark and Sweden have always been very low....
Saw Jay Foreman supporting Dave Gorman a few years ago. Funny, and my wife became obsessed with the song ‘stealing food’. I have his very cheaply produced CDs…
Presumably Sunak will be in Scotland tomorrow asking the locals how they are enjoying the football?
Good one but it was smart of Labour not to try and make a big deal of Sunak's supposed gaffe when in Wales. The real one was to come a bit later on D-Day.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
3rd place qualifier for England next Sunday, and Italy in quarter final following Saturday. England semi finalists a good bet.
You’ve clearly not seen them play at the tournament! They’ve reverted to the terrified of failure style of the ‘golden generation’.
England do have some cutting edge players though, the sort who tend to shine later in tournaments in big games.
The other thing about tournament football is England can win it without having to play France or Spain. Good sides end up clashing before they reach you.
Keeping Walker and rice fit is important. Sure Trippier will slot in on right, but Walkers pace is a key weapon, defending and attacking, whilst Rice is so very classy in transition, any replacement for him weakens transition.
Attacks on police officers, two churches and a synagogue in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have left many people dead. Gunmen targeted the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala on the Orthodox festival of Pentecost.
It's almost as if 45 years of a Thatcherite consensus has been a fucking disaster. Now I know that can't possibly be true. Because. Reasons.
The Thatcherite economy was built on privatisation receipts and North Sea Oil. It wasn't a long term plan, particularly outside the finance sector. Reaganite growth was similarly built on massive deficit spending, in another unsustainable way, as indeed was New Labour's boom.
The rest is the world catching up with Northern Europe and USA. Firstly the Japanese in the Sixties and Seventies, then the Asian tiger economies and Southern Europe in the Eighties, then China and Eastern Rurope in the noughties, and India in the Twenties.
Sure, they haven't caught up yet, and much of the MENA, SSA and LM regions remain poor, but globalisation has massively redistributed the world's wealth. It is now more geographically dispersed than any period of the last two centuries, though paradoxically within these countries often very unevenly spread.
It's inevitable that our relative status as a country is affected by this "levelling up" of what we're even 50 years ago very poor societies. This is what drives a lot of far right feeling. It's a bit like males feeling threatened by female equality, a loss of relative privilege.
So, an economic transformation rather than a political one, in so far as these can be teased apart, and from an outsiders perspective a positive transformation.
I think it's time for Labour to weigh in against Farage. The way to do so is to highlight Farage's close association to Trump. Trump is so reviled that it may persuade some previous Red Wall Labour defectors, currently disillusioned with the Conservatives, to switch back to Labour rather than to try their luck with Reform.
The trouble is that Labour may soon be dealing with President Trump in the White House. It's hard to know how to play it.
However it will become a problem for Farage as well. If he's serious going 'mainstream', he needs to appeal to people who really don't like Trump at all. Acting as a fanboy won't do that.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
You asked the question.
True.
But the Treasury should only be worrying about people who are actually avoiding tax - instead of treating all small companies as suspicious, as seems to be the case.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
You asked the question.
More to the point surely it's the lack of employer NI
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
You asked the question.
True.
But what the Treasury shouldn't like are the people avoiding tax - instead of all small companies, as seems to be the case.
What tax is Amazon avoiding. That's the reason taxes are being pushed towards employment and purchases because it's very hard to collect Corporation tax when the company makes a paper loss for multiple reasons...
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
You asked the question.
More to the point surely it's the lack of employer NI
Attacks on police officers, two churches and a synagogue in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have left many people dead. Gunmen targeted the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala on the Orthodox festival of Pentecost.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
You asked the question.
More to the point surely it's the lack of employer NI
The obvious solution to that is to abolish it!
There are £65bn (rapidly increasing) reasons why Employer NI won't be abolished
In fact compared to many EU countries our rate of Employer NI is low...
Are you a fan of the Bad Movie Bible YT channel Viewcode?
Yes and no. I have seen previous ones before, and will see new ones again, but not one of my go-tos. Around the same level as GoodFlicksBadFlicks and Oliver Harper.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
You asked the question.
More to the point surely it's the lack of employer NI
The obvious solution to that is to abolish it!
There are £65bn (rapidly increasing) reasons why Employer NI won't be abolished
In fact compared to many EU countries our rate of Employer NI is low...
Well, obviously you'd move it to income tax - but clearly that isn't going to happen because some people might find out that their tax rate is a lot higher than they thought.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
The endemic tax-avoidance I imagine.
Mrs Flatlander doesn't avoid tax. It isn't much of an incentive to earn more if you are treated with suspicion at every turn though.
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
You asked the question.
More to the point surely it's the lack of employer NI
The obvious solution to that is to abolish it!
There are £65bn (rapidly increasing) reasons why Employer NI won't be abolished
In fact compared to many EU countries our rate of Employer NI is low...
Well, obviously you'd move it to income tax - but clearly that isn't going to happen because some people might find out that their tax rate is a lot higher than they thought.
Why would you obviously move it to income tax, that would require pay to be increased to match the lost employer NI and every experiment / attempt to do so worldwide has shown that it wouldn't occur.
JK Rowling needed an editor. The last two or three books are silly.
And the movies she's written are utter trash.
She hasn’t written any movies
I disagree with JKR's stance on trans and I can't speak knowledegably on her written fiction, (having never read them) although her sales figures speak for themselves. But oddly I may be able to cast light on her screenwriting and filmrunning abilities post-Potter, as it's cropped up in the past.
As a broad rule of thumb, she has two problems as a screenwriter
She casts oddly/capriciously. She insisted on casting Johnny Depp in FB despite his star fading due to age/domestic issues, as IIUC she had a crush on him when she was younger. Katherine Waterston was defocussed due to her views on trans. God alone knows how Ezra Miller got in or stayed in.
She writes exposition, not scenes. She has a tendency to impart info by dialogue, with characters sat around talking to each other. It works on the page, not on film.
People familiar with the evolution of - say - Star Trek will be familiar with this problem, with a much-loved creator sticking with an old formula and needing to shunted off to the side to let the thing breathe. If in twenty years one of her grown children executive produces "HP XIV: The Return of Voldemort" and saying that it must be true to the spirit of JKR, you'll see the parallel.
Rowling's books are entertaining drivel. They aren't brilliantly written but I've read much worse, e.g. Dan Brown and Cixin Liu. The plots of the Harry Potter books are pastiche but contain enough interesting plot twists to keep the pages turning. At least, from the third book onwards. The first two are absolute turkeys. The stories are largely wish fulfilment fantasies, with influences scarcely concealed. The good v evil binary is understandable because it's popular, but shows a certain lack of ambition. There are troubling elements to her books in the tokenisation and objectification of minorities. Characters and their names can be generously described as Dickensian but can also be described as racist. She raises problematic themes and partially addresses them in some cases ("mudbloods" as a cipher for mixed race people, dealt with in an appropriate albeit heavy-handed way) and in other cases appear to be unintentional and prejudicial inclusions (the grasping hook-nosed goblin bankers as a cipher for Jews have often been cited here).
I agree with all of that, but I will say that as someone who was a young child when the third book came out, I owe JK Rowling an incredible debt. The Harry Potter books were my gateway into reading, with all that comes with that. I branched out from them, to the Old Kingdom and Bartimeaus Trilogy, later, but without Harry Potter I never would have read The Years or Lyndon Johnson or The End of the Party. It's sad to see how Rowling has become radicalised (just look at her recent rhetoric and compare it to The Witch Hunt podcast) but without her I'm sure my life, and the lives millions of others, would be much poorer. Her writing holds lots to criticise, both technically and thematically, but she inspired a generation to read and that is worth a lot in the balance.
I tried reading the first Harry Potter novel in about 2001 and couldn't get beyond page 5. Went to see the first Harry Potter film with my family but didn't like it that much, and haven't been to see any of the others.
JK Rowling needed an editor. The last two or three books are silly.
And the movies she's written are utter trash.
She hasn’t written any movies
I disagree with JKR's stance on trans and I can't speak knowledegably on her written fiction, (having never read them) although her sales figures speak for themselves. But oddly I may be able to cast light on her screenwriting and filmrunning abilities post-Potter, as it's cropped up in the past.
As a broad rule of thumb, she has two problems as a screenwriter
She casts oddly/capriciously. She insisted on casting Johnny Depp in FB despite his star fading due to age/domestic issues, as IIUC she had a crush on him when she was younger. Katherine Waterston was defocussed due to her views on trans. God alone knows how Ezra Miller got in or stayed in.
She writes exposition, not scenes. She has a tendency to impart info by dialogue, with characters sat around talking to each other. It works on the page, not on film.
People familiar with the evolution of - say - Star Trek will be familiar with this problem, with a much-loved creator sticking with an old formula and needing to shunted off to the side to let the thing breathe. If in twenty years one of her grown children executive produces "HP XIV: The Return of Voldemort" and saying that it must be true to the spirit of JKR, you'll see the parallel.
Rowling's books are entertaining drivel. They aren't brilliantly written but I've read much worse, e.g. Dan Brown and Cixin Liu. The plots of the Harry Potter books are pastiche but contain enough interesting plot twists to keep the pages turning. At least, from the third book onwards. The first two are absolute turkeys. The stories are largely wish fulfilment fantasies, with influences scarcely concealed. The good v evil binary is understandable because it's popular, but shows a certain lack of ambition. There are troubling elements to her books in the tokenisation and objectification of minorities. Characters and their names can be generously described as Dickensian but can also be described as racist. She raises problematic themes and partially addresses them in some cases ("mudbloods" as a cipher for mixed race people, dealt with in an appropriate albeit heavy-handed way) and in other cases appear to be unintentional and prejudicial inclusions (the grasping hook-nosed goblin bankers as a cipher for Jews have often been cited here).
I agree with all of that, but I will say that as someone who was a young child when the third book came out, I owe JK Rowling an incredible debt. The Harry Potter books were my gateway into reading, with all that comes with that. I branched out from them, to the Old Kingdom and Bartimeaus Trilogy, later, but without Harry Potter I never would have read The Years or Lyndon Johnson or The End of the Party. It's sad to see how Rowling has become radicalised (just look at her recent rhetoric and compare it to The Witch Hunt podcast) but without her I'm sure my life, and the lives millions of others, would be much poorer. Her writing holds lots to criticise, both technically and thematically, but she inspired a generation to read and that is worth a lot in the balance.
Whilst noting the point, I have to say that going from The Prisoner of Azkaban to The Years of Lyndon Johnson is one hell of a jump. That must have been a heck of a Young Readers section of Waterstones... 😀
AI summary The text discusses the current state of the Conservative Party in the midst of the election campaign and the potential aftermath of a significant defeat. It highlights that many on the right have given up hope of denting Labour's likely majority. The Conservative parliamentary party's size and who remains to rescue the party from ruins will be crucial. CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) is reportedly losing hope, and some candidates have been ordered to halt their campaigns and assist cabinet ministers with larger majorities. The text suggests that a new leader will need to revitalize the party's policies, be popular with the public, and have good media skills. Nigel Farage is unlikely to lead the Conservative Party, despite some shared views, as he has made a career out of trying to destroy the party. The text acknowledges that the Conservative Party has bounced back from defeats in the past but predicts a terrible defeat in this election. The blame game has already begun, but it is not solely Rishi Sunak's fault for the election date or Isaac Levido's for campaign tactics. If the party is reduced to a small number of seats, a leadership contest with numerous candidates would not be necessary. Some candidates may struggle to retain their seats, while others are considered safe. Rushing a leadership contest may not be wise, and appointing a temporary leader could be an option. The text advises the Conservative Party to take their time and not rush the process.
This is nauseating ahistorical drivel and more Kremlin propaganda. Nobody provoked Putin. Nobody “poked the bear with a stick”. The people of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly in 1991 to be a sovereign and independent country. They were perfectly entitled to seek both NATO and EU membership. There is only one person responsible for Russian aggression against Ukraine - both in 2014 and 2022 - and that is Putin. To try to spread the blame is morally repugnant and parroting Putin’s lies.
It is bizarre that the author should also suggest we now reduce our support for Ukraine, when the solution to the conflict is in fact clear - the Ukrainians need to win, and to repel Putin’s invasion. They can and they will. The problem in the last 30 years has not been western provocation but western weakness in the face of Russian aggression - a weakness exemplified by this article.
The one area where Johnson has been consistently stronger and more straightforward than most of his peers.
Well, sort of. He was quite happy with Russian contacts till he saw which way the wind was blowing, then in true Johnson style, he raced to the front.
The turning point was the Salisbury poisonings. As it was, I think, for a lot of people. He did a decent job as foreign secretary getting international support for sanctions.
Sanctions after Salisbury were led by the United States but yay Boris. At least Jeremy Corbyn would have stopped the Conservatives taking Russian money and not appointed KGB-linked Russians to the House of Lords against the advice of MI6 in 2020, two years after Salisbury.
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Are you arguing that bright people from working-class communities should stay there even if they want to go elsewhere?
The obvious argument is that they should have more opportunities to stay.
Taz has this bang on. I have to walk less than half a mile to see the problems that both parties have failed to address.
Boris had the right vibes on "levelling up" but the wrong governance.
TBF to Boris (why?) we'll never know if his levelling up vibes would have had good governance or not. He became PM in 2019, and the election in which he got a majority where he could actually do something was later that year. Less than a year after becoming PM, Covid occurred, and such programs rapidly lost their focus.
Even if Covid had not happened, and Boris was still PM, five years is not a long time to see results from what would have been a long and difficult process.
The problem was not with levelling up, or Boris. The problem is that his successors abandoned the idea (stupidly, IMO), and it doesn't seem to be a priority with Starmer either (also stupidly, but perhaps he thinks he can achieve the same effects in a different way, which I doubt).
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Worrying signs.
Why?
Because moths are indicator species of environmental harm/good. The diversity of moths is used to monitor environmental change. This is all of a part with the large scale collapse of insect populations over the last few decades.
Thanks in part to MM I have been doing a great deal of moth trapping as a means of measuring the improvements on my land due to rewilding.
Plenty of people like that, just not many with a million+ followers on social media.
I pay her the same attention I pay any drooling lunatic at closing time in any local pub.
I am sure she would think the same of you if she even knew you existed.
If I were a billionaire, I would probably find better ways to spend my days than sitting on social media drumming up hatred for oppressed minorities.
But hey-ho.
I've never watched or read any of her fiction, the only reason I know of her existence is because she's a massive [expletive deleted].
This posting shows you might actually be a better writer of fiction than she is.
I've never watched a movie based on her stories or read one of her books. If it weren't for the trans stuff, as far as I'm concerned she'd be no more famous than Leon. I.e. an author who shitposts online far too much and is a bit touched in the head by certain issues.
The difference is I actually like Leon, and think he has a modicum of wit.
I was not referring to her abilities (which are prodigious) but more towards yours. You do a fine line in deranged fantasy. Like Lovecraft but with more drugs.
Citation required before you call me out like that, bud. If you have something to say it, say it, rather than pathetically insinuate stuff.
Put up or shut up.
I am insinuating nothing. You are an extremist loon. The very thing you claim for your victims.
Map Men are very entertaining although it's worth noting they do get some things factually wrong (I forget what, it was some time ago I saw the relevant video). I think that's just because it's hard to be 100% with stuff that covers history and geography rather than intentional, mind. I still watch Kings and Generals even though they erroneously have 200 elephants on the Roman side at Cynoscephelae.
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Worrying signs.
+1
Please help bring your Party back. They, and we, desperately need good people like you.
Talking of scapegoating, what about the scapegoating of working class communities for whom none of this has worked and for whom labour just took for granted as they always voted for them and the Tories did sod all to level up. Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are. Communities that, under both parties, saw the good paying jobs in industry exported and replace with call centres and distribution hubs. The posho contingency here has not got a clue how many people just exist in this country.
You see some of the wailing about Brexit, like Eric idle today whining because he cannot go to France for more than 90 days, something that really affects precious few people to see the level of detachment.
I did not vote Brexit and would not vote reform but I absolutely get why people did/do and the failure of mainstream politicians to engage with these communities but just tell them what they should think has been telling.
Any argument is a little undermined by this "Communities that lose their brightest and best to London and the South where the jobs and opportunities are."
This is where the paradox with Reform is at its most stark - Farage is an unreconstructed Thatcherite. He wants tax cuts, a la Truss, for the wealthy and is signed up to all this supply-side Lafferite nonsense. He also wants spending cuts though he rarely says it out loud wittering on about "woke" and "diversity".
Reform members and voters, on the other hand, are in a very different place. They signed up to the Conservative Levelling Up aganda which promised more money and resources for the north and midlands. Sunak and the Conservatives betrayed this in a nanosecond with the scrapping of HS2 north of Birmingham - a huge middle finger to the north.
Reform members and voters want the money and resources spent on the WWC in the north, not "wasted" as they would see it on the metropolitan liberal south. What won the north and midlands (the "Red Wall") wasn't Brexit - it was the sale of council houses. The sons and daughters of the original council house buyers inheriting property, becoming home owners and becoming Conservatives.
Labour neglected the north and didn't see or understand the impact of this huge change from rental to ownership - the Conservatives betrayed the north via the failure of HS2 and Levelling Up and the home owners are now left with big mortgages.
Reform's paradox will render it completely unable to meet the promises of their members and voters. The best hope for Reform oddly enough is to ditch Farage completely.
I don't see the contradiction that you do. The North didn’t grow rich on Southern taxes building it tramways and municipal sculptures; it grew rich because people had factories and business and they grew. Infrastructure followed, again built privately. That's what Reform want to do - get the state off peoples' backs, so that once again, running an actual business is doable in this country. That's actual 'levelling up'.
I confess I've not read the Reform manifesto in detail but that doesn't sound like the Reform minded voter. They simply want what they should consider a fair slice of the national cake spent in the poorer areas. That was a key aspect of Levelling Up - the re-direction of resources as well a the prioritisation on infrastructure.
It's not just about running a business and to be controversial, given how many businesses fail, perhaps it should be more about helping people run businesses by showing them how to run businesses.
It has nothing to do with being shown how to run a business. Energy in this country is double what it is in the US. Taxes are through the roof. The Government hikes the minimum wage every time it wants a free popularity boost. Net Zero is busy nailing the coffin shut. How can we compete on those terms?
There isn't the environment to do business in this country. I made a blue sky suggestion at work that we should build a garment factory in the UK and was laughed out of the room.
I think you'll find the voters Reform is targeting understand this completely and are a lot more streetwise than you are giving them credit for.
I'm sure that "insight" is found in supporters of all parties and none - it's not exclusive to Reform who can express the anger but seem to have no more answer than anyone else.
I seem, Budget after Budget, to have heard Chancellor after Chancellor claiming they are helping business (especially SMEs) and yet it's never enough. Banks used to fight for local SME accounts - perhaps they don't any longer.
I appreciate it's impossible to square the circle between demands on the public finances (and that includes the armed forces as much as it does the NHS) and the ability of the economy to generate the growth needed to sustain that demand.
But the point is that they shouldn't NEED support. And they only need subsidies and grants and loans and exemptions because of the costs that are being imposed by Government in the first place - particular green levies. So we have a tax-subsidy-go-round where the Government picks the winners. It is deeply unhealthy and it is killing our economy.
As for Reform's answer, it has found two major sources of untapped revenue, and it plans to deploy them to raise the VAT threshhold to £250,000 and the personal allowance to £20,000. Those are exciting policies that alone, would be game on for the economy. They are the sort of thing that would be in a Tory manifesto were the Tories not centrist no-hopers.
Increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 is utterly insane.
With tax going digital in April 2026 reducing the VAT threshold to £30,000 or makes sense because all the paperwork needs to be done anyway.
The only question then is can you reduce the rate to 18% or do you keep it at 20%.
Are you mad?
Do you wan't even more people to pack up or reduce work and live on Universal Credit at Taxpayers expense?
Because that is exactly what cutting the VAT threshold will do. Many sole traders already turn down work to keep their turnover below the VAT threshold.
In which case we set the threshold at £10,000 as the whole point is that everyone collects VAT so there is zero incentive to turn the work down...
Remember that is how the rest of the world operates VAT, very low thresholds in a way that can't be avoided. For reference these are the EU thresholds at which point you start collecting..
The cliff edge at £90k definitely distorts the market. Bring it down the to ICT personal allowance.
Sadly no government will dare do it because of all the negative coverage it would generate.
I don't know - now (well October) would be the absolute perfect time to announce it from April 2026 alongside say a token reduction in VAT rates then...
By the time the next election came around everyone would be used to it...
Remember the ideal time to implement something is in the first 18 months of a Parliament. By the time the next election has come round (say after 48 months) everyone will be used to the changes...
Lowering the VAT threshold with decent reasons would be forgotten by the next election. The bigger issue is things like council tax where revaluations have a massive lead time so the date of implementation would be just before the election was called...
You really can't stop thinking of new and wonderful ways to fuck that golden egg laying goose can you?
What golden egg laying goose - our economy is f***ed... Many parts of England (let alone Wales) are poorer than 90% of EU regions....
Remember too that, even in those parts of the country that are quite prosperous, wealth is distributed hopelessly unevenly. Life is peachy for many homeowners, but just try being a renter almost anywhere nowadays.
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Worrying signs.
Why?
Because moths are indicator species of environmental harm/good. The diversity of moths is used to monitor environmental change. This is all of a part with the large scale collapse of insect populations over the last few decades.
Thanks in part to MM I have been doing a great deal of moth trapping as a means of measuring the improvements on my land due to rewilding.
Indeed. There has been no obvious change in the local environment here. There has been no new regime of spraying insecticides, for example. No obvious increase in predators. There has been an impact on some ash feeders as a result of ash die-back disease (one in six trees in Devon is an ash). The thing we might point to is two wet winters followed by a hot spring (the ground getting baked like concrete, not allowing the underground larva to break through the surface to emerge as moths). It is possible numbers might bounce back. But it does for now look like a concerning crash in numbers. When you think a brood of 10 blue tits requires feeding with 1,000 caterpillars a day, you are going to be seeing a drastic knock on to other wildlife.
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Worrying signs.
Why?
Because moths are indicator species of environmental harm/good. The diversity of moths is used to monitor environmental change. This is all of a part with the large scale collapse of insect populations over the last few decades.
Thanks in part to MM I have been doing a great deal of moth trapping as a means of measuring the improvements on my land due to rewilding.
Indeed. There has been no obvious change in the local environment here. There has been no new regime of spraying insecticides, for example. No obvious increase in predators. There has been an impact on some ash feeders as a result of ash die-back disease (one in six trees in Devon is an ash). The thing we might point to is two wet winters followed by a hot spring (the ground getting baked like concrete, not allowing the underground larva to break through the surface to emerge as moths). It is possible numbers might bounce back. But it does for now look like a concerning crash in numbers. When you think a brood of 10 blue tits requires feeding with 1,000 caterpillars a day, you are going to be seeing a drastic knock on to other wildlife.
Is there any chance that there might be a new or recurring) disease going through the populations, or are moth species so varied that there could not be a single contagion?
Also, is this unprecedented, or does such scarcity happen some years, or even cyclically? Or are records too incomplete to tell us this?
(Apologies, that's a lot of questions, but your post was fascinating and thought-provoking.)
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Worrying signs.
Why?
Because moths are indicator species of environmental harm/good. The diversity of moths is used to monitor environmental change. This is all of a part with the large scale collapse of insect populations over the last few decades.
Thanks in part to MM I have been doing a great deal of moth trapping as a means of measuring the improvements on my land due to rewilding.
Indeed. There has been no obvious change in the local environment here. There has been no new regime of spraying insecticides, for example. No obvious increase in predators. There has been an impact on some ash feeders as a result of ash die-back disease (one in six trees in Devon is an ash). The thing we might point to is two wet winters followed by a hot spring (the ground getting baked like concrete, not allowing the underground larva to break through the surface to emerge as moths). It is possible numbers might bounce back. But it does for now look like a concerning crash in numbers. When you think a brood of 10 blue tits requires feeding with 1,000 caterpillars a day, you are going to be seeing a drastic knock on to other wildlife.
What’s your honest take on the situation in our rivers MM? I have a view as a sometime fisherwoman but I’d be interested to know yours, electioneering aside please?
Second question, have you seen the extended version of the Yellowstone re-wilding documentary? I’m not sure how scientifically backed it is but it’s fascinating.
AI summary The text discusses the current state of the Conservative Party in the midst of the election campaign and the potential aftermath of a significant defeat. It highlights that many on the right have given up hope of denting Labour's likely majority. The Conservative parliamentary party's size and who remains to rescue the party from ruins will be crucial. CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) is reportedly losing hope, and some candidates have been ordered to halt their campaigns and assist cabinet ministers with larger majorities. The text suggests that a new leader will need to revitalize the party's policies, be popular with the public, and have good media skills. Nigel Farage is unlikely to lead the Conservative Party, despite some shared views, as he has made a career out of trying to destroy the party. The text acknowledges that the Conservative Party has bounced back from defeats in the past but predicts a terrible defeat in this election. The blame game has already begun, but it is not solely Rishi Sunak's fault for the election date or Isaac Levido's for campaign tactics. If the party is reduced to a small number of seats, a leadership contest with numerous candidates would not be necessary. Some candidates may struggle to retain their seats, while others are considered safe. Rushing a leadership contest may not be wise, and appointing a temporary leader could be an option. The text advises the Conservative Party to take their time and not rush the process.
Attacks on police officers, two churches and a synagogue in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have left many people dead. Gunmen targeted the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala on the Orthodox festival of Pentecost.
When I’m up in Surrey, even on the heath (from which my handles derives), the sound most heard is not the woodpecker, nor owl, nor the cuckoo - all of which are regulars.
No. It’s leaf-blowers.
Usually petrol driven and often incessant from 8am until 5pm most days of the year. Noise polluting and environmentally impactful on several levels from the 2-stroke petrol fumes to the removal of vital mulch.
I’m not quite sure what the paranoia is amongst Surrey householders about the evil of the leaf. It’s a strange obsession in this most arboreal county of England.
Anyway I’m tootling back to the South-west for the week to do some writing. The idea of two bases seemed to confound someone on here the other day but I believe it’s not uncommon.
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Worrying signs.
Why?
Because moths are indicator species of environmental harm/good. The diversity of moths is used to monitor environmental change. This is all of a part with the large scale collapse of insect populations over the last few decades.
Thanks in part to MM I have been doing a great deal of moth trapping as a means of measuring the improvements on my land due to rewilding.
Indeed. There has been no obvious change in the local environment here. There has been no new regime of spraying insecticides, for example. No obvious increase in predators. There has been an impact on some ash feeders as a result of ash die-back disease (one in six trees in Devon is an ash). The thing we might point to is two wet winters followed by a hot spring (the ground getting baked like concrete, not allowing the underground larva to break through the surface to emerge as moths). It is possible numbers might bounce back. But it does for now look like a concerning crash in numbers. When you think a brood of 10 blue tits requires feeding with 1,000 caterpillars a day, you are going to be seeing a drastic knock on to other wildlife.
I can drive to a hill in the Highlands in August and not need to wash the windscreen on the way. That's as strong a signal as any.
When I’m up in Surrey, even on the heath (from which my handles derives), the sound most heard is not the woodpecker, nor owl, nor the cuckoo - all of which are regulars.
No. It’s leaf-blowers.
Usually petrol driven and often incessant from 8am until 5pm most days of the year. Noise polluting and environmentally impactful on several levels from the 2-stroke petrol fumes to the removal of vital mulch.
I’m not quite sure what the paranoia is amongst Surrey householders about the evil of the leaf. It’s a strange obsession in this most arboreal county of England.
That is so disappointing, Heathener.
I had always assumed the name was a play on heathen, which conjured up all sorts of wild and exotic images. Never occurred to me is was just the blasted heath!
That will potentially take out Russia’s ability to communicate with anything past low-earth orbit, which would be another game-changer for the war. It was a unique facility.
Was the last time that Scotland won a match at a football tournament against Switzerland in 1996 ?
If so then perhaps a 'one lion' version of "thirty years of hurt never stopped me dreaming" could be arranged for them for world cup 2026.
Skinner and Baddiel will not be available - they'll be singing about England's sixty years of hurt.
Yep, at the next World Cup the line “30 years of hurt” will be 30 years old.
Feel rather sorry for Scoland last night, that’s a horrible way to go out.
The "30 years of hurt" line was slightly premature in 1996, of course, as it implied that the years of hurt began immediately after the final whistle blew in the 1966 World Cup Final. I'd have thought they actually began when England went out of the 1970 tournament, so it should have been 26 years of hurt.
When I’m up in Surrey, even on the heath (from which my handles derives), the sound most heard is not the woodpecker, nor owl, nor the cuckoo - all of which are regulars.
No. It’s leaf-blowers.
Usually petrol driven and often incessant from 8am until 5pm most days of the year. Noise polluting and environmentally impactful on several levels from the 2-stroke petrol fumes to the removal of vital mulch.
I’m not quite sure what the paranoia is amongst Surrey householders about the evil of the leaf. It’s a strange obsession in this most arboreal county of England.
That is so disappointing, Heathener.
I had always assumed the name was a play on heathen, which conjured up all sorts of wild and exotic images. Never occurred to me is was just the blasted heath!
I’m a country girl by background. Grew up fishing the rivers and lakes of Devon and Cornwall: brown trout, sea trout, and salmon. Surrey heathland came into my life later but I do love it.
These days I would always return a salmon, not that I fish much now, but the decline of wildlife around our rivers is very obvious to me.
So, sadly, I’ve never danced naked in a coven on top of Salisbury hill
Was the last time that Scotland won a match at a football tournament against Switzerland in 1996 ?
If so then perhaps a 'one lion' version of "thirty years of hurt never stopped me dreaming" could be arranged for them for world cup 2026.
Skinner and Baddiel will not be available - they'll be singing about England's sixty years of hurt.
Yep, at the next World Cup the line “30 years of hurt” will be 30 years old.
Feel rather sorry for Scoland last night, that’s a horrible way to go out.
We all wanted them to win, but the truth is they were slightly the inferior of two modest sides.
Can't say I'm at all optimistic about England either. There is a familiar pattern forming of huge underperformance at major competitions. It is all the more obvious because this must be the most talented group of players to represent the country since the early 70s.
Four a.m. at the moth trap. Warm, slight drizzle in the air. No sign of yesterday's Strawberry Moon behind solid cloud.
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Worrying signs.
Why?
Because moths are indicator species of environmental harm/good. The diversity of moths is used to monitor environmental change. This is all of a part with the large scale collapse of insect populations over the last few decades.
Thanks in part to MM I have been doing a great deal of moth trapping as a means of measuring the improvements on my land due to rewilding.
Indeed. There has been no obvious change in the local environment here. There has been no new regime of spraying insecticides, for example. No obvious increase in predators. There has been an impact on some ash feeders as a result of ash die-back disease (one in six trees in Devon is an ash). The thing we might point to is two wet winters followed by a hot spring (the ground getting baked like concrete, not allowing the underground larva to break through the surface to emerge as moths). It is possible numbers might bounce back. But it does for now look like a concerning crash in numbers. When you think a brood of 10 blue tits requires feeding with 1,000 caterpillars a day, you are going to be seeing a drastic knock on to other wildlife.
I can drive to a hill in the Highlands in August and not need to wash the windscreen on the way. That's as strong a signal as any.
Oh I miss the Highlands
If it wasn’t so far from my friends and family I would live there like a shot. I’ve travelled all over the world but I adore the Scottish Highlands.
AI summary The text discusses the current state of the Conservative Party in the midst of the election campaign and the potential aftermath of a significant defeat. It highlights that many on the right have given up hope of denting Labour's likely majority. The Conservative parliamentary party's size and who remains to rescue the party from ruins will be crucial. CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) is reportedly losing hope, and some candidates have been ordered to halt their campaigns and assist cabinet ministers with larger majorities. The text suggests that a new leader will need to revitalize the party's policies, be popular with the public, and have good media skills. Nigel Farage is unlikely to lead the Conservative Party, despite some shared views, as he has made a career out of trying to destroy the party. The text acknowledges that the Conservative Party has bounced back from defeats in the past but predicts a terrible defeat in this election. The blame game has already begun, but it is not solely Rishi Sunak's fault for the election date or Isaac Levido's for campaign tactics. If the party is reduced to a small number of seats, a leadership contest with numerous candidates would not be necessary. Some candidates may struggle to retain their seats, while others are considered safe. Rushing a leadership contest may not be wise, and appointing a temporary leader could be an option. The text advises the Conservative Party to take their time and not rush the process.
Tell you what, if the alternative is between shoring up the conservatives and letting reform colonizing the entire right into the middle, I chose shoring up the conservatives.
The hard right cannot be allowed to consolidate. The outcome of a person like Fromage becoming PM would be devastating to the country. Look at reforms manifesto.....
1) implementing their tax policies would cause a run on the banks and totally crash the economy.... think truss times 100. 2) their authoritarian mindset would demolish basic liberties and institutional procedures, 3) their natural tendencies to align with putin, Belarus, orban etc would make us an international pariah, 4) I am just dead set against rebranded fascism... just because they gave up on uniforms and Rudolf hess's birthday, they represent totalitarian ideas that caused immense suffering in the not to distant path.
Fortunately, the core voting segments that support reform seem to be in terminal decline in britain as they are mainly boomers. I think support for Fromage will decline substantially by the 2029 and 2034 GEs (see voting intention by age in the link below)
In the meanwhile I vastly prefer a moderate centrist tory party rebranded for pro eu progressive Millenials... and I think that is what will ultimately happen if the tories survive.
Let's face it there just isn't room for two populist parties on the right As that type of vote is unlikely to pass 15-19%. When push comes to shove, I see reform as the outcome of a failure rather than a success... the failure of ukippers to colonize the and take over the full tory vote. They (the crypto Conservative erg/braverman types) also failed to take over the conservative party infrastructure and had to drag themselves back to a more marginal position. The difference is that the hard right can no longer dress up in the credibility of tory branding, which was their original goal. In many ways the tories heroically destroyed themselves to deny the radical right that kind of access to power. I know the tories are out of favour now (and I naturally lean left and pro eu), but I suspect future historians will identify the 2024 GE and a critical turning point in british electoral history
When I’m up in Surrey, even on the heath (from which my handles derives), the sound most heard is not the woodpecker, nor owl, nor the cuckoo - all of which are regulars.
No. It’s leaf-blowers.
Usually petrol driven and often incessant from 8am until 5pm most days of the year. Noise polluting and environmentally impactful on several levels from the 2-stroke petrol fumes to the removal of vital mulch.
I’m not quite sure what the paranoia is amongst Surrey householders about the evil of the leaf. It’s a strange obsession in this most arboreal county of England.
That is so disappointing, Heathener.
I had always assumed the name was a play on heathen, which conjured up all sorts of wild and exotic images. Never occurred to me is was just the blasted heath!
I’m a country girl by background. Grew up fishing the rivers and lakes of Devon and Cornwall: brown trout, sea trout, and salmon. Surrey heathland came into my life later but I do love it.
These days I would always return a salmon, not that I fish much now, but the decline of wildlife around our rivers is very obvious to me.
So, sadly, I’ve never danced naked in a coven on top of Salisbury hill
Not sure what part of Surrey you are in but it is a beautiful County. For a while my morning commute was from Shalford to Redhill, along the North Downs. It was a delightful way to start the day.
The image you have conjured up will do nicely for today.
Good morning! I enjoyed reading the post on the Lib Dems seats yesterday for the election. My prediction is Labour 415.Tories 150. Lib Dems 50. And then the other parties. Or Labour 395. Tories 165. Lib Dems 55 and the rest of the parties. Although I admit I do not have much faith in the second set of numbers.Not long to go now so a good time for us to focus on the numbers!
I have lived in a few different places in Surrey and there are some noisy residents! However you can say that about many different places! There used to be a list called Crap towns in England as voted on by people who lived in them. Very interesting.
Attacks on police officers, two churches and a synagogue in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan have left many people dead. Gunmen targeted the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala on the Orthodox festival of Pentecost.
Early signs of disaffection among the Russian population?
Apparently there have been Islamist terrorist attacks in Dagestan before. But yes, the denuding of young men from the stans to fight for the partying Muscovite elites can hardly be helping that.
It'll be interesting to see how Russia tries to blame Ukraine (or the west...) for this.
By the way, I know starmer isn't super exciting to many people, but it is this patient, relentless effort and strategic long term focus that I kind of admire about Starmer. He doesn't go for any one particular short term win, but always has his eye on the final outcome. He plays 8 dimensional chess with his opponents to this end. And he is utterly ruthless in this regard. People who call him flip flop and stuff like that only call him flip flop because they are not operating on the same scale - they haven't yet seen his goal. Underestimate him at your own expense....
Best view in Surrey Newlands corner?Leith Hill or Box Hill?
All really beautiful. Difficult to split them though I do love Newlands Corner. I’ve walked there often. Which is your favourite?
I also love the ridge line from Farnham to Godalming/Guildford. Not so much the Hog’s Back itself (although from the A31 it’s beautiful) but the pretty footpaths just south of it which are the start of the North Downs Way near Seale. There are some lanes nearby that make it driveable coming out at Puttenham and then you link in with the route @Peter_the_Punter just mentioned between Shalford and Redhill which is so pretty. Great area for cycling and hiking.
Comments
Map men, map men, map map map men men men...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nB688xBYdY
So either you drop it so that all trades are registered. Or you increase it to something like £250k. Current level is worst of all worlds.
Hence charging and collecting VAT is about to become no more difficult than what anyone self employed is going to have to do anyway...
Anyway if you haven't been for a while you'll be impressed by the way the locals look after themselves. Have a great wedding and trust me you'll get to love the French!
We have one of the smallest tax gaps in the developed world. HMRC do a pretty good job. But the grey economy still exists and digitisation is the solution.
Plus there is the matter of having to set aside and save 20% of turnover to pay the VAT rather than having the small amount of income tax due for her combined employment and self employment dealt with in her tax code.
You seem unable to grasp that the more you increase the hassle and cost of working, the less work is done and the less the treasury gets.
I do wonder what options there will be to fill in the forms.
What is it about sole traders and small companies that the Treasury don't like?
JAY FOREMAN https://www.twitter.com/jayforeman
MARK COOPER-JONES https://www.twitter.com/markcooperjones
A communist, redistributive tax and benefits system results in communist country indolence and eventual bankruptcy of the state.
I have his very cheaply produced CDs…
Unless they are also paying people in cash in hand at which point they are going to be in a whole heap of bigger issues...
Mind you, she'd have stopped being a sole trader years ago if it wasn't for all the paperwork involved in employing someone.
The end result is that large consultancies are the last ones standing and are able to charge silly amounts. Everyone loses (except those owning the consultancies, obviously).
The other thing about tournament football is England can win it without having to play France or Spain. Good sides end up clashing before they reach you.
Keeping Walker and rice fit is important. Sure Trippier will slot in on right, but Walkers pace is a key weapon, defending and attacking, whilst Rice is so very classy in transition, any replacement for him weakens transition.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crgggwg158do
The rest is the world catching up with Northern Europe and USA. Firstly the Japanese in the Sixties and Seventies, then the Asian tiger economies and Southern Europe in the Eighties, then China and Eastern Rurope in the noughties, and India in the Twenties.
Sure, they haven't caught up yet, and much of the MENA, SSA and LM regions remain poor, but globalisation has massively redistributed the world's wealth. It is now more geographically dispersed than any period of the last two centuries, though paradoxically within these countries often very unevenly spread.
It's inevitable that our relative status as a country is affected by this "levelling up" of what we're even 50 years ago very poor societies. This is what drives a lot of far right feeling. It's a bit like males feeling threatened by female equality, a loss of relative privilege.
So, an economic transformation rather than a political one, in so far as these can be teased apart, and from an outsiders perspective a positive transformation.
However it will become a problem for Farage as well. If he's serious going 'mainstream', he needs to appeal to people who really don't like Trump at all. Acting as a fanboy won't do that.
But the Treasury should only be worrying about people who are actually avoiding tax - instead of treating all small companies as suspicious, as seems to be the case.
After the war, Poujade was the owner of a book and stationery store.
On 23 July 1953, with a group of about 20 persons, Poujade prevented inspectors of the tax board from verifying the income of another shopkeeper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Poujade
And one of the first poujadists elected to the French Parliament in 1956 was... Jean-Marie Le Pen.
In fact compared to many EU countries our rate of Employer NI is low...
This is a cowardly capitulation.
The misogynist fucks the Taliban have demanded that a UN conference on Afghanistan exclude women. And the UN agreed.
"It is a betrayal not just of Afghan women but all women around the world.”
https://x.com/ImtiazMadmood/status/1804842500009435548
https://www.iaindale.com/articles/is-starmergeddon-coming-for-the-tories
AI summary
The text discusses the current state of the Conservative Party in the midst of the election campaign and the potential aftermath of a significant defeat. It highlights that many on the right have given up hope of denting Labour's likely majority. The Conservative parliamentary party's size and who remains to rescue the party from ruins will be crucial. CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) is reportedly losing hope, and some candidates have been ordered to halt their campaigns and assist cabinet ministers with larger majorities. The text suggests that a new leader will need to revitalize the party's policies, be popular with the public, and have good media skills. Nigel Farage is unlikely to lead the Conservative Party, despite some shared views, as he has made a career out of trying to destroy the party. The text acknowledges that the Conservative Party has bounced back from defeats in the past but predicts a terrible defeat in this election. The blame game has already begun, but it is not solely Rishi Sunak's fault for the election date or Isaac Levido's for campaign tactics. If the party is reduced to a small number of seats, a leadership contest with numerous candidates would not be necessary. Some candidates may struggle to retain their seats, while others are considered safe. Rushing a leadership contest may not be wise, and appointing a temporary leader could be an option. The text advises the Conservative Party to take their time and not rush the process.
https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools/summarizer
Courtenay Meredith, last survivor of the last Welsh rugby union team to have beaten New Zealand – obituary
Nicknamed ‘The Iron Man’, he helped Wales to defeat the All Blacks at Cardiff in 1953. Since then, New Zealand have won every single match
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/06/21/courtenay-meredith-welsh-wales-rugby-union-1953-zealand/ (£££)
Just me, the moths - and a lone skylark, singing way off above. Up with the lark indeed.
Should have been a great night for moths. Instead, just two hawkmoths - an elephant and a lime. Six years back, that might have been thirty. Species list in the mid-30's. It should be more than double that, maybe treble. Struggling to reach 100 moths. I've had nights here when it was nearer a thousand.
Worrying signs.
Even if Covid had not happened, and Boris was still PM, five years is not a long time to see results from what would have been a long and difficult process.
The problem was not with levelling up, or Boris. The problem is that his successors abandoned the idea (stupidly, IMO), and it doesn't seem to be a priority with Starmer either (also stupidly, but perhaps he thinks he can achieve the same effects in a different way, which I doubt).
Thanks in part to MM I have been doing a great deal of moth trapping as a means of measuring the improvements on my land due to rewilding.
I have put up. You can shut up.
Map Men are very entertaining although it's worth noting they do get some things factually wrong (I forget what, it was some time ago I saw the relevant video). I think that's just because it's hard to be 100% with stuff that covers history and geography rather than intentional, mind. I still watch Kings and Generals even though they erroneously have 200 elephants on the Roman side at Cynoscephelae.
Please help bring your Party back. They, and we, desperately need good people like you.
Feel rather sorry for Scoland last night, that’s a horrible way to go out.
Also, is this unprecedented, or does such scarcity happen some years, or even cyclically? Or are records too incomplete to tell us this?
(Apologies, that's a lot of questions, but your post was fascinating and thought-provoking.)
Second question, have you seen the extended version of the Yellowstone re-wilding documentary? I’m not sure how scientifically backed it is but it’s fascinating.
How Wolves Changed Rivers
https://ethology.eu/how-wolves-change-rivers/
https://sustainablehuman.org/stories/how-wolves-change-rivers/
https://youtu.be/aZsteDMUsU4
p.s. I should perhaps explain that I’m pretty convinced about the links ref. insects, fields, and rivers
It's this place, which is currently Russia's only such station.
https://www.russianspaceweb.com/kik_nip16.html
This might dent Russia's ability to operate its spy satellites...
(There are also some rumours that Russia were using it for other military purposes as well.)
https://IanB2.com/writing-tools/supersummariser
No. It’s leaf-blowers.
Usually petrol driven and often incessant from 8am until 5pm most days of the year. Noise polluting and environmentally impactful on several levels from the 2-stroke petrol fumes to the removal of vital mulch.
I’m not quite sure what the paranoia is amongst Surrey householders about the evil of the leaf. It’s a strange obsession in this most arboreal county of England.
I had always assumed the name was a play on heathen, which conjured up all sorts of wild and exotic images. Never occurred to me is was just the blasted heath!
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1804968315024199767?s=12
That will potentially take out Russia’s ability to communicate with anything past low-earth orbit, which would be another game-changer for the war. It was a unique facility.
I’m a country girl by background. Grew up fishing the rivers and lakes of Devon and Cornwall: brown trout, sea trout, and salmon. Surrey heathland came into my life later but I do love it.
These days I would always return a salmon, not that I fish much now, but the decline of wildlife around our rivers is very obvious to me.
So, sadly, I’ve never danced naked in a coven on top of Salisbury hill
Can't say I'm at all optimistic about England either. There is a familiar pattern forming of huge underperformance at major competitions. It is all the more obvious because this must be the most talented group of players to represent the country since the early 70s.
It isn't obvious what is going wrong.
If it wasn’t so far from my friends and family I would live there like a shot. I’ve travelled all over the world but I adore the Scottish Highlands.
Oh dear, what a shame.
The hard right cannot be allowed to consolidate. The outcome of a person like Fromage becoming PM would be devastating to the country. Look at reforms manifesto.....
1) implementing their tax policies would cause a run on the banks and totally crash the economy.... think truss times 100. 2) their authoritarian mindset would demolish basic liberties and institutional procedures, 3) their natural tendencies to align with putin, Belarus, orban etc would make us an international pariah, 4) I am just dead set against rebranded fascism... just because they gave up on uniforms and Rudolf hess's birthday, they represent totalitarian ideas that caused immense suffering in the not to distant path.
Fortunately, the core voting segments that support reform seem to be in terminal decline in britain as they are mainly boomers. I think support for Fromage will decline substantially by the 2029 and 2034 GEs (see voting intention by age in the link below)
In the meanwhile I vastly prefer a moderate centrist tory party rebranded for pro eu progressive Millenials... and I think that is what will ultimately happen if the tories survive.
Let's face it there just isn't room for two populist parties on the right As that type of vote is unlikely to pass 15-19%. When push comes to shove, I see reform as the outcome of a failure rather than a success... the failure of ukippers to colonize the and take over the full tory vote. They (the crypto Conservative erg/braverman types) also failed to take over the conservative party infrastructure and had to drag themselves back to a more marginal position. The difference is that the hard right can no longer dress up in the credibility of tory branding, which was their original goal. In many ways the tories heroically destroyed themselves to deny the radical right that kind of access to power. I know the tories are out of favour now (and I naturally lean left and pro eu), but I suspect future historians will identify the 2024 GE and a critical turning point in british electoral history
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1379439/uk-election-polls-by-age/
The image you have conjured up will do nicely for today.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/24/tory-minister-accused-of-cronyism-after-associates-firm-hired-as-adviser
It'll be interesting to see how Russia tries to blame Ukraine (or the west...) for this.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-boris-johnson-partygate-b2567067.html
I also love the ridge line from Farnham to Godalming/Guildford. Not so much the Hog’s Back itself (although from the A31 it’s beautiful) but the pretty footpaths just south of it which are the start of the North Downs Way near Seale. There are some lanes nearby that make it driveable coming out at Puttenham and then you link in with the route @Peter_the_Punter just mentioned between Shalford and Redhill which is so pretty. Great area for cycling and hiking.
Yeah you’re right, it’s one of the most dangerous roads in England.
Some people drive like utter loons on the A31/A3. I’ve no idea why?