Things are starting to inch back in for the Conservatives. Far too late now however, only two days of campaigning left.
I believed at the start of the campaign a hung Parliament wasn't out of the realms of possibility if the Conservatives could creep back up to 30-32% and take from Labour pushing them down to the high 30s.
Labour's support has fallen (but it was never that solid to begin with) but the Conservatives haven't really crept back into the game.
Reform are now at UKIP 2013 levels, and my guess they'd get 2 seats might be an exageration. Lib Dems also being squeezed, along with the Greens and for all Davey's antics, I could see them finishing on only the high teens in terms of seats......
The LDs will do far better than that in terms of seats.
Going into the election on 15 seats, and with the same vote, more concentrated, as 2019, I think the Lib Dems would still, on a very bad night, manage to get into the mid 20s. If the MRPs are right, then they can expect a minimum of 30-35. However, and although their campaign has been regarded as a success, whilst the Tory campaign is already descending into recriminations, the fact is that the Lib Dem poll rating has been stuck at 11%. Without getting into the low/mid teens, I fear a night of near misses and disappointment in target seats, whilst still facing obliteration in non targets.
I suspect the LibDem vote share will actually end up in the 12-13% range. My gut - and it's only a gut - is that they'll be a smidgen above their 2019 tally. Albeit, down in absolute number of votes.
Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of planning to be a “part-time prime minister” after suggesting he would want to finish work at 6pm on Fridays.
The Labour leader said that on the last working day of the week he does “not do a work-related thing after 6pm pretty well come what may”, saying he wanted to protect time spent with his family.
He added that he planned to maintain the habit if his party was to be elected on Thursday.
Note to the world, you can't have anything happen on Friday evenings.
While I think Starmer's general point is right, just as Cameron had a balance. Like his never use private healthcare, it does rather concern me that you have such hard and fast rules to your life.
Obviously if there was an international incident he would work, but his wife is Jewish and Friday Night Dinner is very important to her. He’s said it several times before.
Well, I liked the show too, but he can watch it on demand.
KEIR ! stop phoning that Joe Biden ,FND is on TELE
If memory serves correctly, you weren't allowed to watch television on the Jewish Sabbath, so the television programme "Friday Night Dinner" about a Jewish family dinner on Friday Night, could not be watched live by a Jewish family having dinner on a Friday, since the programme was transmitted on Friday night.
Dinnerception!
(Incidentally, was this timing in fact the joke and I'm thick for not getting it?)
Only some Orthodox Jews take that line.
Friday Night Dinner was about a cultural Jewish family, which would also appeal to liberal Jews.
Not the time or place for a lesson in religious studies, but Sunak has been a clot over this.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Need many more degree apprenticeships, and more part-time study.
The problem with the 50% is that there’s not degree-level jobs for 50% of the population, so employers start using a degree as a basic filter on low-level applications, which reinforces the problem that the choice is between a degree or a minimum wage job.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Or necessarily a more efficient one. I always liked George Soros's view that the best asset managers need "time to hang heavily on their hands" to come up with their best ideas. Our Society prefers Hares to Tortoises, but fails to remember who won the race.
I used to spend a lot of time with Robert Rowland, who ran Soros in London. They used to have a UK equities fund that only ever owned five stocks, and they would usually only change them once a year.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Or necessarily a more efficient one. I always liked George Soros's view that the best asset managers need "time to hang heavily on their hands" to come up with their best ideas. Our Society prefers Hares to Tortoises, but fails to remember who won the race.
I used to spend a lot of time with Robert Rowland, who ran Soros in London. They used to have a UK equities fund that only ever owned five stocks, and they would usually only change them once a year.
It was a staggeringly successful fund.
Yes, I used to broke to the EM guys. They really knew their stuff and were extremely astute.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
The obvious alternative to this de facto graduate tax is to make it an actual graduate tax with a high threshold, or simply to fund students from general taxation. After all, government presumably does believe education is a public good that benefits all of society by giving us higher living standards and it more tax revenue as graduates in general innovate and earn more than would otherwise have been the case.
ETA as an aside, the student loan model with its income-dependant repayments might be a good idea for other purposes such as government support for industry.
Not so long ago I would have jumped for joy at a 15 point lead on the Monday before polling day.
Now I'm wondering why the gap looks like it is closing.
Too many outliers and rogue polls for my liking.
People decide in the last week. It could be radically different on the day. Remember that no one expected the 2017 result. Even when the exit poll came out, people didn’t believe it. Check out the thread here.
Rule 1 of politics, do not underestimate the Tories. Labour generally needs everything going for it to scrape a majority.
Wasn't the problem of 2017 people overestimating the Tories?
No. It was vastly underestimating the 40% Labour share.
It was vastly underestimating how the Remain vote would break for Labour.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Need many more degree apprenticeships, and more part-time study.
The problem with the 50% is that there’s not degree-level jobs for 50% of the population, so employers start using a degree as a basic filter on low-level applications, which reinforces the problem that the choice is between a degree or a minimum wage job.
Another things that nobody really has a grown up discussion about. The Tories had their gimmicky policy and straight away it was arms in the air, nooooooo, we can't do that, insert 100 different reasons.
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Or necessarily a more efficient one. I always liked George Soros's view that the best asset managers need "time to hang heavily on their hands" to come up with their best ideas. Our Society prefers Hares to Tortoises, but fails to remember who won the race.
I used to spend a lot of time with Robert Rowland, who ran Soros in London. They used to have a UK equities fund that only ever owned five stocks, and they would usually only change them once a year.
It was a staggeringly successful fund.
Yes, I used to broke to the EM guys. They really knew their stuff and were extremely astute.
You probably know my former colleagues, Cato Stonex and Nils Taube.
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
Sometimes the Waterloo & City Line gets closed, then you see a few rich people take the bus.
Things are starting to inch back in for the Conservatives. Far too late now however, only two days of campaigning left.
I believed at the start of the campaign a hung Parliament wasn't out of the realms of possibility if the Conservatives could creep back up to 30-32% and take from Labour pushing them down to the high 30s.
Labour's support has fallen (but it was never that solid to begin with) but the Conservatives haven't really crept back into the game.
Reform are now at UKIP 2013 levels, and my guess they'd get 2 seats might be an exageration. Lib Dems also being squeezed, along with the Greens and for all Davey's antics, I could see them finishing on only the high teens in terms of seats......
The LDs will do far better than that in terms of seats.
Going into the election on 15 seats, and with the same vote, more concentrated, as 2019, I think the Lib Dems would still, on a very bad night, manage to get into the mid 20s. If the MRPs are right, then they can expect a minimum of 30-35. However, and although their campaign has been regarded as a success, whilst the Tory campaign is already descending into recriminations, the fact is that the Lib Dem poll rating has been stuck at 11%. Without getting into the low/mid teens, I fear a night of near misses and disappointment in target seats, whilst still facing obliteration in non targets.
I suspect the LibDem vote share will actually end up in the 12-13% range. My gut - and it's only a gut - is that they'll be a smidgen above their 2019 tally. Albeit, down in absolute number of votes.
Not unreasonable. The post GE discussion for the Lib Dems will be how to expand the overall level of support, but that's a battle for another day.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
The obvious alternative to this de facto graduate tax is to make it an actual graduate tax with a high threshold, or simply to fund students from general taxation. After all, government presumably does believe education is a public good that benefits all of society by giving us higher living standards and it more tax revenue as graduates in general innovate and earn more than would otherwise have been the case.
After the last decade, what more would it take to convince you that politicians don't do things because of the public good, but because they think they will be popular?
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
Sometimes the Waterloo & City Line gets closed, then you see a few rich people take the bus.
It is probably because I am from London. Buses are normal in London.
Round here in Bedfordshire, not so much with bells on.
Per mile road tolls instead of VED and fuel tax would sort it.
Six weeks ago my prediction for the final result was:
Lab 39 Con 25 LibDem 15 Ref 14 Green 4
I’ve probably gone too high with the LibDems there but I also think they will probably poll higher than 10%. I’ll nudge them down to 13% and Reform down two points to 12% so:
Lab 39 Con 25 LibDem 13% Ref 12% Green 4%
On UNS (Electoral Calculus) my prediction would give roughly:
Lab 440 Con 100 LibDem 65 Ref 5 Green 3
Lab majority of c. 220 but I think that may still be too high
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Or necessarily a more efficient one. I always liked George Soros's view that the best asset managers need "time to hang heavily on their hands" to come up with their best ideas. Our Society prefers Hares to Tortoises, but fails to remember who won the race.
I used to spend a lot of time with Robert Rowland, who ran Soros in London. They used to have a UK equities fund that only ever owned five stocks, and they would usually only change them once a year.
It was a staggeringly successful fund.
Is he perchance a relation to Spotty Rowland, the former Tory party donor?
"Look at Starmer's hair when he's next on TV. Why's it so thick, what's it hiding? We need to know - get that nice Nicky Robinson to have a look! L is for Labour. L is for Lice."
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Or necessarily a more efficient one. I always liked George Soros's view that the best asset managers need "time to hang heavily on their hands" to come up with their best ideas. Our Society prefers Hares to Tortoises, but fails to remember who won the race.
I used to spend a lot of time with Robert Rowland, who ran Soros in London. They used to have a UK equities fund that only ever owned five stocks, and they would usually only change them once a year.
It was a staggeringly successful fund.
Is he perchance a relation to Spotty Rowland, the former Tory party donor?
Never underestimate the conservatives. Their voters turn out on election day. It’s going to be a hell of a lot closer than hyped polls suggest.
I think Labour getting 5% below the polls is more likely than the Tories getting 5% above the polls.
You’re talking what you want to see, you’re hot for Reform taking Labour’s vote.
I think most on PB are doing that to an extent. I think Leon isn't, because he doesn't want to predict a right wing revolution and then be endlessly mocked if it doesn't happen. If I made a prediction, it would be based largely on a triangulation of what I want to happen and what everyone else says is likely to happen.
I think the US is in a dangerous place when both sides are now openly and consistently attacking judges and their legal rulings.
This has been developing since at least 2000 and Bush vs Gore. Agree we’re in a very dangerous place now. Obama could and should have done alot more to insure against what’s happening now.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
it was an early start for Rishi Sunak this morning - he was pictured at an Ocado distribution centre in Luton just after 5am. He has now been seen picking up breakfast (from McDonald's) at a service station in Buckinghamshire.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
it was an early start for Rishi Sunak this morning - he was pictured at an Ocado distribution centre in Luton just after 5am. He has now been seen picking up breakfast (from McDonald's) at a service station in Buckinghamshire.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
it was an early start for Rishi Sunak this morning - he was pictured at an Ocado distribution centre in Luton just after 5am. He has now been seen picking up breakfast (from McDonald's) at a service station in Buckinghamshire.
Never underestimate the conservatives. Their voters turn out on election day. It’s going to be a hell of a lot closer than hyped polls suggest.
I think Labour getting 5% below the polls is more likely than the Tories getting 5% above the polls.
You’re talking what you want to see, you’re hot for Reform taking Labour’s vote.
I think most on PB are doing that to an extent. I think Leon isn't, because he doesn't want to predict a right wing revolution and then be endlessly mocked if it doesn't happen. If I made a prediction, it would be based largely on a triangulation of what I want to happen and what everyone else says is likely to happen.
Leon would not be constantly mocked for being wrong if he did not go around screeching about how he was right - even when he is wrong.
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
A lovely surprise this morning to find myself in agreement with you on something.
I take buses loads. They’re a great way to see the world, both outside and inside the windows.
Never underestimate the conservatives. Their voters turn out on election day. It’s going to be a hell of a lot closer than hyped polls suggest.
I think Labour getting 5% below the polls is more likely than the Tories getting 5% above the polls.
You’re talking what you want to see, you’re hot for Reform taking Labour’s vote.
I think most on PB are doing that to an extent. I think Leon isn't, because he doesn't want to predict a right wing revolution and then be endlessly mocked if it doesn't happen. If I made a prediction, it would be based largely on a triangulation of what I want to happen and what everyone else says is likely to happen.
He did predict a right wing revolution endlessly and then backtracked when the polls didn’t match his hyping up of Reform.
In fact, it took a lot of people on here to persuade him that Farage had blundered over his Ukraine comments.
Things are starting to inch back in for the Conservatives. Far too late now however, only two days of campaigning left.
I believed at the start of the campaign a hung Parliament wasn't out of the realms of possibility if the Conservatives could creep back up to 30-32% and take from Labour pushing them down to the high 30s.
Labour's support has fallen (but it was never that solid to begin with) but the Conservatives haven't really crept back into the game.
Reform are now at UKIP 2013 levels, and my guess they'd get 2 seats might be an exageration. Lib Dems also being squeezed, along with the Greens and for all Davey's antics, I could see them finishing on only the high teens in terms of seats......
The LDs will do far better than that in terms of seats.
Going into the election on 15 seats, and with the same vote, more concentrated, as 2019, I think the Lib Dems would still, on a very bad night, manage to get into the mid 20s. If the MRPs are right, then they can expect a minimum of 30-35. However, and although their campaign has been regarded as a success, whilst the Tory campaign is already descending into recriminations, the fact is that the Lib Dem poll rating has been stuck at 11%. Without getting into the low/mid teens, I fear a night of near misses and disappointment in target seats, whilst still facing obliteration in non targets.
I suspect the LibDem vote share will actually end up in the 12-13% range. My gut - and it's only a gut - is that they'll be a smidgen above their 2019 tally. Albeit, down in absolute number of votes.
A smidgen above 11? Like 15-20?
If that were the case, you should be buying Tory seats wholesale as they will be north of 200.
I will be surprised if Davey doesn’t equal the 1997 total of 46.
This morning I am seeing political adverts on the web (rather than social media, so presumably via Google Adsense) from Labour and even more from RefUK.
This morning I am seeing political adverts on the web (rather than social media, so presumably via Google Adsense) from Labour and even more from RefUK.
Things are starting to inch back in for the Conservatives. Far too late now however, only two days of campaigning left.
I believed at the start of the campaign a hung Parliament wasn't out of the realms of possibility if the Conservatives could creep back up to 30-32% and take from Labour pushing them down to the high 30s.
Labour's support has fallen (but it was never that solid to begin with) but the Conservatives haven't really crept back into the game.
Reform are now at UKIP 2013 levels, and my guess they'd get 2 seats might be an exageration. Lib Dems also being squeezed, along with the Greens and for all Davey's antics, I could see them finishing on only the high teens in terms of seats......
The LDs will do far better than that in terms of seats.
Going into the election on 15 seats, and with the same vote, more concentrated, as 2019, I think the Lib Dems would still, on a very bad night, manage to get into the mid 20s. If the MRPs are right, then they can expect a minimum of 30-35. However, and although their campaign has been regarded as a success, whilst the Tory campaign is already descending into recriminations, the fact is that the Lib Dem poll rating has been stuck at 11%. Without getting into the low/mid teens, I fear a night of near misses and disappointment in target seats, whilst still facing obliteration in non targets.
I suspect the LibDem vote share will actually end up in the 12-13% range. My gut - and it's only a gut - is that they'll be a smidgen above their 2019 tally. Albeit, down in absolute number of votes.
A smidgen above 11? Like 15-20?
If that were the case, you should be buying Tory seats wholesale as they will be north of 200.
I will be surprised if Davey doesn’t equal the 1997 total of 46.
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
A lovely surprise this morning to find myself in agreement with you on something.
I take buses loads. They’re a great way to see the world, both outside and inside the windows.
Top deck on a rural double decker bus is fantastic. Especially at this time of year
Six weeks ago my prediction for the final result was:
Lab 39 Con 25 LibDem 15 Ref 14 Green 4
I’ve probably gone too high with the LibDems there but I also think they will probably poll higher than 10%. I’ll nudge them down to 13% and Reform down two points to 12% so:
Lab 39 Con 25 LibDem 13% Ref 12% Green 4%
On UNS (Electoral Calculus) my prediction would give roughly:
Lab 440 Con 100 LibDem 65 Ref 5 Green 3
Lab majority of c. 220 but I think that may still be too high
I think you've used the electoral calculus default setting, and not the universal swing option.
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
A lovely surprise this morning to find myself in agreement with you on something.
I take buses loads. They’re a great way to see the world, both outside and inside the windows.
Top deck on a rural double decker bus is fantastic. Especially at this time of year
Buses are the simplest and cheapest way to take some heat out of the housing market. Make city centres more accessible from the towns, villages and suburbs so you don't have to scrap it out for a walking-distance flat.
Since, everyone is giving their predictions, here is my GE24 prediction based on the latest advances in statistical modelling (otherwise known as my gut).
Labour 421 Tories 129 LD 46 SNP 24 Plaid 3 Reform 2 Greens 2 Others 5 Northern Ireland 18
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
A lovely surprise this morning to find myself in agreement with you on something.
I take buses loads. They’re a great way to see the world, both outside and inside the windows.
Top deck on a rural double decker bus is fantastic. Especially at this time of year
Cornwall run a couple of routes on open top buses. Can be a bit bracing, but at a maximum £2 a ride great value
Six weeks ago my prediction for the final result was:
Lab 39 Con 25 LibDem 15 Ref 14 Green 4
I’ve probably gone too high with the LibDems there but I also think they will probably poll higher than 10%. I’ll nudge them down to 13% and Reform down two points to 12% so:
Lab 39 Con 25 LibDem 13% Ref 12% Green 4%
On UNS (Electoral Calculus) my prediction would give roughly:
Lab 440 Con 100 LibDem 65 Ref 5 Green 3
Lab majority of c. 220 but I think that may still be too high
I think you've used the electoral calculus default setting, and not the universal swing option.
You’re right, thank you
Well that makes me a little happier about my initial view of a 160-seat Labour majority.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
The option is to make it general taxation and have everyone pay the same rate of tax.
There's no justification why some people should be on a 9% higher rate of tax than others. If you are on the same income, you should be on the same rate of tax.
Why should my daughters pay a higher rate of tax than I do? It's unacceptable and wrong.
Merge the graduate tax into income tax. It won't be 9% then.
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
A lovely surprise this morning to find myself in agreement with you on something.
I take buses loads. They’re a great way to see the world, both outside and inside the windows.
Top deck on a rural double decker bus is fantastic. Especially at this time of year
Buses are the simplest and cheapest way to take some heat out of the housing market. Make city centres more accessible from the towns, villages and suburbs so you don't have to scrap it out for a walking-distance flat.
Yes, much of the secret of London's success is that Londoners are prepared to commute longer than those in the regions. And that is partly because they can!
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Undergraduate education needs to be cheaper. Premier Inn when half the population goes there, don't pretend to be the Savoy. Leave the world beating stuff to the postgraduate level.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
The option is to make it general taxation and have everyone pay the same rate of tax.
There's no justification why some people should be on a 9% higher rate of tax than others. If you are on the same income, you should be on the same rate of tax.
Why should my daughters pay a higher rate of tax than I do? It's unacceptable and wrong.
Merge the graduate tax into income tax. It won't be 9% then.
So having paid off my student loan through insane hard work, I then have to pay again?
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
A lovely surprise this morning to find myself in agreement with you on something.
I take buses loads. They’re a great way to see the world, both outside and inside the windows.
Top deck on a rural double decker bus is fantastic. Especially at this time of year
Cornwall run a couple of routes on open top buses. Can be a bit bracing, but at a maximum £2 a ride great value
Absolutely. Likewise there’s a Jurassic Coaster bus run by First, so a normal bus service rather than a £££ tourist one, and it’s fab:
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
We were (largely) funding it out of general taxation prior to 2010.
We decided to spend it on protecting pensioners instead.
Right there you have the start of the schism in the age support for the Conservatives.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
it was an early start for Rishi Sunak this morning - he was pictured at an Ocado distribution centre in Luton just after 5am. He has now been seen picking up breakfast (from McDonald's) at a service station in Buckinghamshire.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
I have always thought that universities should organise their courses so the students can more easily work. In fact they could earn money working as a temp agency
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
The option is to make it general taxation and have everyone pay the same rate of tax.
There's no justification why some people should be on a 9% higher rate of tax than others. If you are on the same income, you should be on the same rate of tax.
Why should my daughters pay a higher rate of tax than I do? It's unacceptable and wrong.
Merge the graduate tax into income tax. It won't be 9% then.
So having paid off my student loan through insane hard work, I then have to pay again?
Yeah, unfortunately. I'm in the same boat.
It's completely shit, it should never have been introduced like that, but everyone on the same income should be on the same rate of tax.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Undergraduate education needs to be cheaper. Premier Inn when half the population goes there, don't pretend to be the Savoy. Leave the world beating stuff to the postgraduate level.
Well this was the mistake both Labour and then repeated by Tories thinking the market would decide, and of course no university wants to be seen as the EasyJet or RyanAir of unis.
As we have discussed loads of time on here the other problem is each degree varying massive in cost. Chemistry genuinely costs £15k+ a year for all the labs, chemicals, etc etc etc. Liberal arts are very cheap. But universities charge the same for all degrees, so one is subsidising the other, and / or university won't offer the expensive ones anyway.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
I mean, I've banged on about the corruption of this Supreme Court before, when I won that bet against @Peter_the_Punter on how they'd rule over the 14th Amendment, for example.
But I never dreamed they'd do something as mad as this.
Have the six horsemen been tested for illegal substances?
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
Although you could qualify that somewhat. I work very hard, but much of my work is in the evenings or weekends. So you might see me swanning about during the day and think of me as a scrounger while behind the scenes I'm still working a 60-hour week.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
You can't judge like that, many people work shifts/weekends.
Every day you go out and get served by someone on the weekend who facilitates any entertainment on your day off . . . They need a day off too.
Things are starting to inch back in for the Conservatives. Far too late now however, only two days of campaigning left.
I believed at the start of the campaign a hung Parliament wasn't out of the realms of possibility if the Conservatives could creep back up to 30-32% and take from Labour pushing them down to the high 30s.
Labour's support has fallen (but it was never that solid to begin with) but the Conservatives haven't really crept back into the game.
Reform are now at UKIP 2013 levels, and my guess they'd get 2 seats might be an exageration. Lib Dems also being squeezed, along with the Greens and for all Davey's antics, I could see them finishing on only the high teens in terms of seats......
The LDs will do far better than that in terms of seats.
Going into the election on 15 seats, and with the same vote, more concentrated, as 2019, I think the Lib Dems would still, on a very bad night, manage to get into the mid 20s. If the MRPs are right, then they can expect a minimum of 30-35. However, and although their campaign has been regarded as a success, whilst the Tory campaign is already descending into recriminations, the fact is that the Lib Dem poll rating has been stuck at 11%. Without getting into the low/mid teens, I fear a night of near misses and disappointment in target seats, whilst still facing obliteration in non targets.
I suspect the LibDem vote share will actually end up in the 12-13% range. My gut - and it's only a gut - is that they'll be a smidgen above their 2019 tally. Albeit, down in absolute number of votes.
A smidgen above 11? Like 15-20?
If that were the case, you should be buying Tory seats wholesale as they will be north of 200.
I will be surprised if Davey doesn’t equal the 1997 total of 46.
I'm talking vote share, not number of seats.
One of the reasons the Tories are going big on tax is to save some of their seats in places like Surrey, that are under threat from the LDs.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
Given the amount of crow the Lib Dems have had to eat after Cameron forced tuition fees on the coalition, there is a small sense of karma in this
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
I’m not sure now is the right time to be discussing what you and one or two other would consider my radical, non-conformist, even anti-capitalist, view on this.
But it’s fair to say I profoundly disagree with you. Human beings are not expendable commodities.
The country which has most championed your approach is one of the unhappiest and most messed-up on earth.
Well-being is of paramount importance. But I would take a very radical tack and 48-hours before a GE isn’t the time for that discussion.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
I have always thought that universities should organise their courses so the students can more easily work. In fact they could earn money working as a temp agency
They should be able to learn part time whilst working, bringing up kids, or indeed accelerate a 3 year course into 2 and not have 20 weeks holiday either. They should also be able to learn from whoever can best impart that knowledge at the price they want whether its a particular in person university or an online course.
The rigid approach of learn when we tell you, at our classes only should be a thing of the past.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
Given the amount of crow the Lib Dems have had to eat after Cameron forced tuition fees on the coalition, there is a small sense of karma in this
It ate them, and now it's eating us.
And the mad thing is it was Labour who introduced it.
But it should be abolished. Two wrongs don't make a right and just because I paid towards my own fees doesn't mean the system should continue in perpetuity with the likes of Blair, Cameron and Sunak not paying the same tax rates as young adults today.
You can see another universe where his strategy sort of worked: Reform down at 5-6% and the Conservatives up at 32-33% to Labour's 37-38% and challenging them to a hung parliament.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
You can delete the first two words, universities are in dire financial circumstances. As for students they've been treated as a group that can be fleeced with accommodation priced according to how much they can borrow.
I believe the polls in this election have not been correct. We will find out on Friday.
The unusual choices the voters are making must be making life hard for them.
Would account for the lack of herding.
We will know either way when Sunderland South comes in
Sunderland South is hardly representative of all the other seats.
I'd say we won't really know until we start seeing a few LD target seats too: Harrogate & Knaresborough at c. 01:45, maybe not until Cheltenham and Eastleigh around 03:00.
Do people not think the exit poll will give at least a rough idea of which category the result is in?
Well quite. MrEd/MisterBedfordshire is weirdo Trumpian trollcaster who knows very little about psephology. Hence his now legendary ‘tip’ for Trump to carry VA in Potus 2020, which Trump lost by 11 points.
I'm not Mr Ed. I stopped posting in 2016 until recently
I also don't go round insulting other posters.
Insulting other posters including me because you disagree with their posts says more about you than you intended to reveal.
Happy to take you word for it but your posts are uncannily similar to his and then there's the MrEd/MisterBedfordshire name similarity.
Still remember enjoying a good few beers with Mr Ed at the last PB gathering, shame he got himself banned.
@mrbedfordshire didn't work and has zilch posts because google (gmail) blocked @rcs1000 email message in response to registration to verify the email address because it came from Vanilla not @rcs1000 so googles spoofing klaxons went off (@paul.... had similar problems after the interregnum since 2016)
So @misterbedfordshire came into existence via a non gmail email which didn't block the please verify email address message.
If you are registered here with a gmail address and you need vanilla to send a message to it for any reason (like you forgot your password) you is stuffed.
Ain't life grand.
also Mr Ed would never willingly get on a bus. I'm buying it.
The view that "Buses are for poor people" boils my pee
A lovely surprise this morning to find myself in agreement with you on something.
I take buses loads. They’re a great way to see the world, both outside and inside the windows.
Top deck on a rural double decker bus is fantastic. Especially at this time of year
Buses are the simplest and cheapest way to take some heat out of the housing market. Make city centres more accessible from the towns, villages and suburbs so you don't have to scrap it out for a walking-distance flat.
Yes, much of the secret of London's success is that Londoners are prepared to commute longer than those in the regions. And that is partly because they can!
Yep - I was really surprised to find that London's average commute distance is roughly the same as E&W as a whole. Moving that many people around those kinds of distances is deeply impressive.
Edinburgh is pretty good but we're bigger walkers than Londoners, with shorter commutes on average.
Incidentally, I’m holding off Series 3 of Clarkson’s Farm for after the election but I notice with interest that he is becoming a convert to regenerative farming. Andy Cato (Groove Armada) has apparently converted him:
Things are starting to inch back in for the Conservatives. Far too late now however, only two days of campaigning left.
I believed at the start of the campaign a hung Parliament wasn't out of the realms of possibility if the Conservatives could creep back up to 30-32% and take from Labour pushing them down to the high 30s.
Labour's support has fallen (but it was never that solid to begin with) but the Conservatives haven't really crept back into the game.
Reform are now at UKIP 2013 levels, and my guess they'd get 2 seats might be an exageration. Lib Dems also being squeezed, along with the Greens and for all Davey's antics, I could see them finishing on only the high teens in terms of seats......
The LDs will do far better than that in terms of seats.
Going into the election on 15 seats, and with the same vote, more concentrated, as 2019, I think the Lib Dems would still, on a very bad night, manage to get into the mid 20s. If the MRPs are right, then they can expect a minimum of 30-35. However, and although their campaign has been regarded as a success, whilst the Tory campaign is already descending into recriminations, the fact is that the Lib Dem poll rating has been stuck at 11%. Without getting into the low/mid teens, I fear a night of near misses and disappointment in target seats, whilst still facing obliteration in non targets.
I suspect the LibDem vote share will actually end up in the 12-13% range. My gut - and it's only a gut - is that they'll be a smidgen above their 2019 tally. Albeit, down in absolute number of votes.
A smidgen above 11? Like 15-20?
If that were the case, you should be buying Tory seats wholesale as they will be north of 200.
I will be surprised if Davey doesn’t equal the 1997 total of 46.
I'm talking vote share, not number of seats.
One of the reasons the Tories are going big on tax is to save some of their seats in places like Surrey, that are under threat from the LDs.
Though that drives voters to LD.
I have pointed out to a couple of my colleagues that the LDs do not support VAT on school fees, for example. I suspect that works in the posher bits of the Home Counties too.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
You can't judge like that, many people work shifts/weekends.
Every day you go out and get served by someone on the weekend who facilitates any entertainment on your day off . . . They need a day off too.
I don't believe it for a second but I understand some people suspect there is also a big group of people who claim to work but actually spend their days on an obscure political betting blog. How can we make them more productive?
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Or necessarily a more efficient one. I always liked George Soros's view that the best asset managers need "time to hang heavily on their hands" to come up with their best ideas. Our Society prefers Hares to Tortoises, but fails to remember who won the race.
I used to spend a lot of time with Robert Rowland, who ran Soros in London. They used to have a UK equities fund that only ever owned five stocks, and they would usually only change them once a year.
It was a staggeringly successful fund.
Yes, I used to broke to the EM guys. They really knew their stuff and were extremely astute.
You probably know my former colleagues, Cato Stonex and Nils Taube.
Yes. Nils was of course Estonian, and I spent many happy, and quite bibulous, hours at the feet of the master. I did talk to John Hodson and Cato quite regularly, But Nils was one of the greats, I still miss our chats, even all these years later.
You can see another universe where his strategy sort of worked: Reform down at 5-6% and the Conservatives up at 32-33% to Labour's 37-38% and challenging them to a hung parliament.
I think this is fantasy.
Liz Truss blew that chance and there was a ceiling to any tory recovery. I used to think it was about 29-30% i.e. below their 1997 level. However, it looks to be closer to 25%.
There is simply no evidence that people voting Reform would have ever countenanced placing their X back in the Cons box.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
I have always thought that universities should organise their courses so the students can more easily work. In fact they could earn money working as a temp agency
They should be able to learn part time whilst working, bringing up kids, or indeed accelerate a 3 year course into 2 and not have 20 weeks holiday either. They should also be able to learn from whoever can best impart that knowledge at the price they want whether its a particular in person university or an online course.
The rigid approach of learn when we tell you, at our classes only should be a thing of the past.
That is to view universities as trade schools, such as for medicine or physics teachers. For most, university is a finishing school, where students network and learn which knife and fork to use, while indulging their leisure interests. Take Boris, for instance, whose degree in Classics was irrelevant to his subsequent employment in Fleet Street and Downing Street, but whose contacts made at Oxford were crucial to both.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
You can delete the first two words, universities are in dire financial circumstances. As for students they've been treated as a group that can be fleeced with accommodation priced according to how much they can borrow.
The accommodation aspect is never talked about. The prices are set to what can be borrowed and vast amounts of it is owned / operated by private equity companies as they realised it is easy money and most universities can't afford to build it.
In lots of places you could pay the mortgage on a house than what it costs for a one bed en-suite student accommodation. £200 a week is not uncommon. and they make them pay 40 weeks.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
You can delete the first two words, universities are in dire financial circumstances. As for students they've been treated as a group that can be fleeced with accommodation priced according to how much they can borrow.
@francisurqhart you can Google the loan sell off. The financial institutions that bought the loan book made a killing, any reports into VFM of that sale are so damning that they haven't dared sell off any more.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
Given the amount of crow the Lib Dems have had to eat after Cameron forced tuition fees on the coalition, there is a small sense of karma in this
It ate them, and now it's eating us.
It also moved the tax into the future. Instead of the cost coming up as students study, it becomes liable ten to twenty years later.
And that, see also pay as we go pensions, has been a sin of the British electorate forever. And a pile of those bills our predecessors ran up are coming due. There's not much of an answer to that, because we can't go back in time and make more responsible choices.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
You can't judge like that, many people work shifts/weekends.
Every day you go out and get served by someone on the weekend who facilitates any entertainment on your day off . . . They need a day off too.
I don't believe it for a second but I understand some people suspect there is also a big group of people who claim to work but actually spend their days on an obscure political betting blog. How can we make them more productive?
Haha!
It does bemuse me that people who say they work so hard, and our alleged full-time journalist, spend sooooooooo much of the daylight hours on this website
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
I have always thought that universities should organise their courses so the students can more easily work. In fact they could earn money working as a temp agency
“A survey of 10,000 full-time UK undergraduates by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) found a record 56% had paid employment while they were studying, working an average of 14.5 hours each week.”
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
You can't judge like that, many people work shifts/weekends.
Every day you go out and get served by someone on the weekend who facilitates any entertainment on your day off . . . They need a day off too.
I don't believe it for a second but I understand some people suspect there is also a big group of people who claim to work but actually spend their days on an obscure political betting blog. How can we make them more productive?
PBers are among the most productive people on earth, given they hold down decent jobs while getting all their tasks done during Malcolm/Nigel spats.
Productivity != hours worked. I automated a load of reports my team produces so I now spend the mornings marathon training.
Whilst I would be happy if Liberal Democrats double their seats to 30, the Tories must be worried. Rishi Sunak has made two visits to Hinckley and Bosworth. H and B is a long way down the Lib Dem target list but locally they run the council (23 Lib Dems, 9 Conservative, 1 Labour) and are running an excellent campaign which is going very well at least in Hinckley.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
I have always thought that universities should organise their courses so the students can more easily work. In fact they could earn money working as a temp agency
They should be able to learn part time whilst working, bringing up kids, or indeed accelerate a 3 year course into 2 and not have 20 weeks holiday either. They should also be able to learn from whoever can best impart that knowledge at the price they want whether its a particular in person university or an online course.
The rigid approach of learn when we tell you, at our classes only should be a thing of the past.
That is to view universities as trade schools, such as for medicine or physics teachers. For most, university is a finishing school, where students network and learn which knife and fork to use, while indulging their leisure interests. Take Boris, for instance, whose degree in Classics was irrelevant to his subsequent employment in Fleet Street and Downing Street, but whose contacts made at Oxford were crucial to both.
My approach separates out the bits that are useful and important to national productivity (knowledge and accreditation) and the bits that are useful and important but only to the individuals (networking and "finishing") so both can be paid for appropriately and students can pick'n' mix what they want and can afford.
Work, particularly having a "job" job, is a fucking mug's game. That's just basic Marxism. Why would you do it if you didn't have to?
I agree but from a basic capitalist perspective. Put some money into a world equity tracker and a bit into world government bonds, and basically every working bugger in the world is working for you. The world literally owes you a living.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
You can't judge like that, many people work shifts/weekends.
Every day you go out and get served by someone on the weekend who facilitates any entertainment on your day off . . . They need a day off too.
Well over a million people in the UK (including myself) worked Christmas Day last year. The 'working week' is a myth for many.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
Although you could qualify that somewhat. I work very hard, but much of my work is in the evenings or weekends. So you might see me swanning about during the day and think of me as a scrounger while behind the scenes I'm still working a 60-hour week.
These people weren't working at all. And that was very obvious.
It comes after the BBC revealed earlier this year that the highest UK student debt was more than £231,000. Around three months later, that figure has now hit £252,000.
He pointed out that the data suggests that less than 50 people owe at least £10m between them.
They do mention that the loan gets wiped after 30 years later on, but the way people interviewed respond it is like they think they are actually going to be asked to repay it all or that if it the principle was bit less they wouldn't be paying as much per month.
A more worrying question is with less and less people paying off the principle, is there going to be a black hole that eventually the government i.e. us will have to foot. I believe in the past they have sold off some of the loan book and let a private company take the risk on interest rates / repayments.
It is that perception by graduates of an impossible loan hanging over them that is so politically damaging. It is yet another incidence of the Cameron government (G Osborne, prop) being ‘clever’ and shooting itself in the foot by refusing to make it a graduate tax to be paid above some threshold income, as originally proposed by its education team.
This is true, although its a bit worrying that people who have gone to university, in one of the case studies for 6-7 years and they don't understand the loan scheme they have signed up to. Its really not that complicated.
The graduates may well understand it. They really do have a loan hanging over them that they do need to pay off once they reach the level to which they aspire and it is that aspiration, however unrealistic, that kills the Conservative Party. Ironically, George Osborne played on those same aspirations with his inheritance tax announcement that killed the election that never was so he should have understood at whose foot he was pointing his fiscal shotgun.
It's possibly one reason why the Conservatives have lost so many young people: they've whopped a huge extra tax on them.
Who wants to pay an extra 9% tax for the whole of their careers?
The problem is what are the options? We have a loan system that is basically a graduate tax. 50% of kids now go to university, so funding this out of general taxation is huge. Any suggestion that perhaps not sending quite so many or not full time and that is politically unacceptable to all parents as their little Johnny is special and not fair if they don't go full time, live away from home, get the full university experience.
This isn't how it works in many European countries. The elite go away to elite institutions, most stay local, many are part-time mixed with work and continue to live at home. So they never run up £50-100k in loans.
Make all universities openly offer their exams at a price based on cost plus margin without requiring students to have attended their course. Prices for university education will quickly collapse.
I have always thought that universities should organise their courses so the students can more easily work. In fact they could earn money working as a temp agency
Some do but the sheer number of students makes it impractical.
I mean, I've banged on about the corruption of this Supreme Court before, when I won that bet against @Peter_the_Punter on how they'd rule over the 14th Amendment, for example.
But I never dreamed they'd do something as mad as this.
Have the six horsemen been tested for illegal substances?
Thomas and Allito seemed to have tested positive for money
You can see another universe where his strategy sort of worked: Reform down at 5-6% and the Conservatives up at 32-33% to Labour's 37-38% and challenging them to a hung parliament.
I think this is fantasy.
Liz Truss blew that chance and there was a ceiling to any tory recovery. I used to think it was about 29-30% i.e. below their 1997 level. However, it looks to be closer to 25%.
There is simply no evidence that people voting Reform would have ever countenanced placing their X back in the Cons box.
It's not fantasy at all and the difference between your position and mine is accounted for by just a 5-6% swing from Reform to Conservative, whilst they still hold a decent core vote in excess of the Greens and SNP. It probably needed Farage to be occupied and for Rishi to have had a good campaign and not a bad one.
Again, you resort to absolutes rather than nuance.
If that's ruled an official act, then the minority view was bang on about its impact.
His argument is that he signed off on the records he was convicted of falsifying in 2017 - while he was President. It won't be ruled an official act.
But had the evidence against him - largely testimony from 2016 - originated while he was President, rather than a candidate, it's very likely that it would now be ruled inadmissible.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
You can't judge like that, many people work shifts/weekends.
Every day you go out and get served by someone on the weekend who facilitates any entertainment on your day off . . . They need a day off too.
It's not judgement, it's an observation, because I have seen them sitting in pubs and cafes talking about how they don't work/aren't working.
Trust me: they're not working.
And I'm obviously not talking about serving staff.
I mean, I've banged on about the corruption of this Supreme Court before, when I won that bet against @Peter_the_Punter on how they'd rule over the 14th Amendment, for example.
But I never dreamed they'd do something as mad as this.
Have the six horsemen been tested for illegal substances?
I’m genuinely surprised Roberts didn’t side with the minority. But otherwise not much. Coney Barrett seems to be the fulcrum for the court.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
The latest figures have 33 million people in work, a little under half of the total population, and a smidgen under three-quarters of the 16-64 population.
Never underestimate the conservatives. Their voters turn out on election day. It’s going to be a hell of a lot closer than hyped polls suggest.
I think Labour getting 5% below the polls is more likely than the Tories getting 5% above the polls.
You’re talking what you want to see, you’re hot for Reform taking Labour’s vote.
I think most on PB are doing that to an extent. I think Leon isn't, because he doesn't want to predict a right wing revolution and then be endlessly mocked if it doesn't happen. If I made a prediction, it would be based largely on a triangulation of what I want to happen and what everyone else says is likely to happen.
He did predict a right wing revolution endlessly and then backtracked when the polls didn’t match his hyping up of Reform.
In fact, it took a lot of people on here to persuade him that Farage had blundered over his Ukraine comments.
I’M RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING
In other news I’m on the ferry to Portsmouth. Quite jolly. I could get into ferries
The troubling thing is they're all eminently plausible.
Along with the 'gratuities aren't bribes if they're given after an official act they pay for' ruling, the possibilities are endless.
Along with presidential orders delegating presidential power - which can't be questioned unless revoked by Congress - it makes for a very efficient system.
Its chalk and cheese compared to the debate. The first 30 minutes of the debate he had no clue where he was, could hardly speak, kept freezing in between answers. If that version of Biden was one of my parents I would be looking at getting them into a care home ASAP.
He "woke up" a bit second half, then looked back to totally zombified at the end, frozen on the stage.
I am struggling to buy the argument that it is because he is just old. He spent 7 days off away preparing for the debate so should have been fresh.
He clearly has good days and bad days, perhaps even good hours and bad hours. It’s genuinely sad to watch, especially the video at the end of the debate, and the subsequent appearance with his wife talking to him like a child while he was just frozen in place.
He’s clearly not well, and certainly isn’t going to get any better in the next four years. Any loving family should just tap him on the shoulder and say that enough is enough - but political families don’t think like that.
Well the report came out the other day, 10-4 is really the only hours he normally functions. I mean Starmer taking Friday night off to be with his family is one thing, but leader of the free world who only does office hours of 10-4 on a very good day is something else and will only get worse.
Good morning.
One of the awful things about Sunak’s attack on Starmer is the apparent lack of awareness of what Friday night means. He really is hopeless as a politician.
On which subject, if you’ve never seen Friday Night Dinner then it’s highly recommended. Great comedy.
I love the fact that Keir is showing the way with something that matters. I’m sick and tired of Sunak’s nasty little attempt to normalise work-until-you-drop ethics in Britain. It may be de rigueur in Silicon Valley start-ups but it does not make for a happier world.
Normalising work alone would be good.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
You can't judge like that, many people work shifts/weekends.
Every day you go out and get served by someone on the weekend who facilitates any entertainment on your day off . . . They need a day off too.
I don't believe it for a second but I understand some people suspect there is also a big group of people who claim to work but actually spend their days on an obscure political betting blog. How can we make them more productive?
Haha!
It does bemuse me that people who say they work so hard, and our alleged full-time journalist, spend sooooooooo much of the daylight hours on this website
I get multi-tasking but even so.
Absolutely. You won’t generally find me posting during the working day.
Comments
Friday Night Dinner was about a cultural Jewish family, which would also appeal to liberal Jews.
Not the time or place for a lesson in religious studies, but Sunak has been a clot over this.
The problem with the 50% is that there’s not degree-level jobs for 50% of the population, so employers start using a degree as a basic filter on low-level applications, which reinforces the problem that the choice is between a degree or a minimum wage job.
It was a staggeringly successful fund.
ETA as an aside, the student loan model with its income-dependant repayments might be a good idea for other purposes such as government support for industry.
Round here in Bedfordshire, not so much with bells on.
Per mile road tolls instead of VED and fuel tax would sort it.
Not quite STS-68, which frightened the life out of a bunch of astronauts, but still a good one.
Lab 445
Cons 95
LibDem 64
Reform 5
Green 3
Six weeks ago my prediction for the final result was:
Lab 39
Con 25
LibDem 15
Ref 14
Green 4
I’ve probably gone too high with the LibDems there but I also think they will probably poll higher than 10%. I’ll nudge them down to 13% and Reform down two points to 12% so:
Lab 39
Con 25
LibDem 13%
Ref 12%
Green 4%
On UNS (Electoral Calculus) my prediction would give roughly:
Lab 440
Con 100
LibDem 65
Ref 5
Green 3
Lab majority of c. 220 but I think that may still be too high
https://youtu.be/i4_WuFTX-5E?feature=shared.
And a recent comment:
"Look at Starmer's hair when he's next on TV. Why's it so thick, what's it hiding? We need to know - get that nice Nicky Robinson to have a look!
L is for Labour. L is for Lice."
I'd forgotten he'd been a Brexit Party MEP.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c7204p2r0dkt
The horrors for Rishi, visiting a MccccDon...what's this place called again. Do you take Amex Black Card?
I take buses loads. They’re a great way to see the world, both outside and inside the windows.
In fact, it took a lot of people on here to persuade him that Farage had blundered over his Ukraine comments.
If that were the case, you should be buying Tory seats wholesale as they will be north of 200.
I will be surprised if Davey doesn’t equal the 1997 total of 46.
Trump asks for hush money conviction to be overturned
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw4yp9g7ynwo
If that's ruled an official act, then the minority view was bang on about its impact.
Nothing at all on Facebook except Mindfulness and Well-being (
Nothing at all on my TikTok at all, which surprises me
Ditto my Instagram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beergate
Labour 421
Tories 129
LD 46
SNP 24
Plaid 3
Reform 2
Greens 2
Others 5
Northern Ireland 18
Well that makes me a little happier about my initial view of a 160-seat Labour majority.
Not long now until we all see.
There's no justification why some people should be on a 9% higher rate of tax than others. If you are on the same income, you should be on the same rate of tax.
Why should my daughters pay a higher rate of tax than I do? It's unacceptable and wrong.
Merge the graduate tax into income tax. It won't be 9% then.
I mean, if that were upheld that means any crook, to avoid conviction, just has to be elected President.*
Or, even stranger, that sex with minor porn stars is an official act.
That would liven up the White House Instagram.
*I know this is Trump's strategy, but it goes wider than that.
https://www.firstbus.co.uk/sites/default/files/public/adventures-by-bus/Jurassic Coaster Timetable.pdf
The bus from Teignmouth to Paignton is also a pretty route and I really like the backroad one from Exeter to Okehampton
We decided to spend it on protecting pensioners instead.
Right there you have the start of the schism in the age support for the Conservatives.
In India McDonalds burgers are lamb.
It's completely shit, it should never have been introduced like that, but everyone on the same income should be on the same rate of tax.
As we have discussed loads of time on here the other problem is each degree varying massive in cost. Chemistry genuinely costs £15k+ a year for all the labs, chemicals, etc etc etc. Liberal arts are very cheap. But universities charge the same for all degrees, so one is subsidising the other, and / or university won't offer the expensive ones anyway.
On the very rare occasion I take half-a-day off work during the working week and walk around my town, once or twice a year at best, I'm astonished at how many people simply don't work.
But I never dreamed they'd do something as mad as this.
Have the six horsemen been tested for illegal substances?
Every day you go out and get served by someone on the weekend who facilitates any entertainment on your day off . . . They need a day off too.
But it’s fair to say I profoundly disagree with you. Human beings are not expendable commodities.
The country which has most championed your approach is one of the unhappiest and most messed-up on earth.
Well-being is of paramount importance. But I would take a very radical tack and 48-hours before a GE isn’t the time for that discussion.
The rigid approach of learn when we tell you, at our classes only should be a thing of the past.
But it should be abolished. Two wrongs don't make a right and just because I paid towards my own fees doesn't mean the system should continue in perpetuity with the likes of Blair, Cameron and Sunak not paying the same tax rates as young adults today.
You can see another universe where his strategy sort of worked: Reform down at 5-6% and the Conservatives up at 32-33% to Labour's 37-38% and challenging them to a hung parliament.
https://whowhatwhy.org/justice/courts/supreme-court-crowns-next-authoritarian-president-king/
The troubling thing is they're all eminently plausible.
Edinburgh is pretty good but we're bigger walkers than Londoners, with shorter commutes on average.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxxxz83xwy5o
I have pointed out to a couple of my colleagues that the LDs do not support VAT on school fees, for example. I suspect that works in the posher bits of the Home Counties too.
Liz Truss blew that chance and there was a ceiling to any tory recovery. I used to think it was about 29-30% i.e. below their 1997 level. However, it looks to be closer to 25%.
There is simply no evidence that people voting Reform would have ever countenanced placing their X back in the Cons box.
In lots of places you could pay the mortgage on a house than what it costs for a one bed en-suite student accommodation. £200 a week is not uncommon. and they make them pay 40 weeks.
And that, see also pay as we go pensions, has been a sin of the British electorate forever. And a pile of those bills our predecessors ran up are coming due. There's not much of an answer to that, because we can't go back in time and make more responsible choices.
It does bemuse me that people who say they work so hard, and our alleged full-time journalist, spend sooooooooo much of the daylight hours on this website
I get multi-tasking but even so.
“A survey of 10,000 full-time UK undergraduates by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) found a record 56% had paid employment while they were studying, working an average of 14.5 hours each week.”
Productivity != hours worked. I automated a load of reports my team produces so I now spend the mornings marathon training.
NEW THREAD
Again, you resort to absolutes rather than nuance.
It won't be ruled an official act.
But had the evidence against him - largely testimony from 2016 - originated while he was President, rather than a candidate, it's very likely that it would now be ruled inadmissible.
Trust me: they're not working.
And I'm obviously not talking about serving staff.
They
1-in-4 seems like a high non-working rate.
In other news I’m on the ferry to Portsmouth. Quite jolly. I could get into ferries
Along with presidential orders delegating presidential power - which can't be questioned unless revoked by Congress - it makes for a very efficient system.