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Labour’s taxing problem – politicalbetting.com
Labour’s taxing problem – politicalbetting.com
From what you've seen or heard, do you think the public finances that the outgoing Conservative government left behind were…Very good: 1%Fairly good: 10%Neither good nor bad: 18%Fairly bad: 26%Very bad: 35%https://t.co/EOFd1INBCO pic.twitter.com/WK24B1cgFD
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I would 100% sign a living will which said euthanase me when I no longer recognise my own children (or if I had none some other nice clear objective test). This would solve many problems and increase the sum of human happiness.
I think Labour will be pretty happy with these numbers and that the narrative holds but perhaps saw more pushback from Hunt then they were expecting.
If things really were that bad - as they claim - then why should anyone want to vote for them? And if they were that bad, why are any of the Tories pledges worth the paper they were crayoned on?
My prompt: Please write for me a typical trade union boss name
ChatGPT:
A typical trade union boss name might be "John O'Reilly."
Following statements made in the House, I have written to the Cabinet Secretary on the concerning contradiction between the Main Estimates put before Parliament last week and the document presented by the Chancellor today.
https://x.com/Jeremy_Hunt/status/1818011536335704150
Tweet includes letter to Cabinet Secretary.
The problem Labour has is that the easiest fix for some of the taxes (Council tax is a big problem) takes 2-3 years to re-engineer which is why they won't be dealt with now because that will be connected to the next election.
Although I do think there are ways of revaluing council tax quickly uses a combination of last sold price and the band the house is currently in.
The public finances are stretched. The two big issues that got us there are bailing out the banks ( Brown ) and Covid ( Johnson ).
Labour it seems will simply struggle along and do little to engender groth or improve productivity or overhaul infrastructure.
So much for "change"
Personally whether it's true or not I have no sympathy whatsoever.
The Tories chose to publicise Liam Byrne's private joke saying 'There's no money left' so this is small retribution.
But the complete mad LOL is the absurdly high numbers of Tory voters who believe they left the public finances in good shape.
Yet they’ve actually been very timid with the annoucements, and made some basic errors such as cancelling infrastructure projects to pay for current spending, especially their old friends in the public sector unions.
The 22% raise for those who already earn well above average wage comes across as particularly egregious, and will no doubt inspire other unions to ask for the same. A 22% offer that’s been described as derisory by the union involved, the leader of which does his best to come across as Arthur Scargill with a stethoscope.
A lot of the dynamic was schools, hospitals etc are creaking and the solution is to redirect EU subs and (more sotto voce) cut demand by keeping foreigners out.
That's the logic of the fiscal arguments they've been making.
The surprising thing is the Conservatives dont make more of the impact of Covid.
You then have the very contentious A303 Stonehenge tunnel and an A27 scheme which the locals seem to actively hate...
So I see a couple of political point scoring victories (A303,A27) hidden in the cost cutting there, a pile of populist crap (the restoring railways "projects") and a question over what is investment..
And now she has opened the payrise gates the flood of demands will follow.
I didnt think I would have to live through the 1970s again
Mildly hilarious he sent that letter to Simon Chase given his non grata status in the new government.
The price of not doing it would have been the ongoing warfare that has so damaged productivity in much of the public sector, not least in the NHS. I think, whatever their estimates provided, the Tories would have had to buy peace with the likes of the junior doctors eventually so they were not being entirely honest about that. OTOH Reeves was clear that they would make this commitment so she should have known that this additional money had to be found so she is being dishonest too.
Its also worth bearing in mind that £9bn is roughly 1.2% of government spending. As usual, our politics is played out on an incredibly small canvas with no inclination from either side to face the bigger picture.
Multiple employers fighting for staff who are expensive and time-consuming to train so there's an underlying shortage...
... sounds like a recipe for doctors to play their employers like a fiddle and make even more than they do now. Near-monopsony (that's the word, isn't it?) probably helps the government keep pay down.
And I don't know about you, but I'd like my doctors to be able to command a well above average wage.
As I said when the election was called Rishi knew from now on all the news would be bad so he went for a July rather than a Autumn election. Could it be that the payrises (which are obviously large) was one of those bad bits of news only he and Hunt were aware of...
However the vast amount of money went to people and businesses and the Conservatives skating over this is them selling themselves short.
Move to contracts by individual NHS Trust's at an individual level and we'll be more market aligned. I also suspect doctor wages would increase from here as the NHS's bargaining power is currently strongest.
"Men's triathlon postponed due to poor water quality"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/articles/c4ngjz32j4do
I really hope it can go ahead on the alternate dates, and that it does not become a duathlon, as that would be unfair on the strong swimmers.
In any event, the dynamic is rather different from that of the 70s.
I wasn't saying it's black/white. It's her Tory critics who were making that implied argument with their critique of her fiscal announcement.
Hunt was being every bit as disingenuous as she was.
Quite a few PBers would still like to execute or exile workers for daring to be in unions and negotiating their wages.
Some of your criticism is wish casting a Labour Government failure.
Tough decisions my arse.
Call me cynical but those pay review committees usually report in mid to late May at about the time a general election was called in a massive hurry at no notice...
Seriously, appeals to the "free market" are almost always Thatcherite balls, there's hardly ever any such thing. "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." A cartel of landowners is a cartel but so is a trades union.
Well, yes, always best to get the pain in first even if that means a prolonged mid term trough. If you have a majority of 170 and the main opposition party in disarray, so much the better.
The problem with increasing taxes is 50 years of almost constant propaganda that any and every tax rise is inherently wrong. I'm not sure that's true but nobody wants to be worse off though I would point out misery loves company and if we can see the next guy suffering to a similar or even greater extent that mitigates our discomfort to a degree.
I don't know what else Reeves could or should have done - in truth, £20 billion isn't a lot of money set against the totality of public expenditure. It's a third of what we spend on defence, a fifth of what we're paying in debt interest every year. In essence, she's tinkering at the edges to try to get the deficit down a little and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
I do know the scrapping of the winter fuel allowance (which was absurd) for non-benefit paying pensioners will be sending some to the barricades or to the equal futility of supporting the Conservatives but it was an anomaly which needed to be rectified (the Conservatives could hardly do it given the age of their voters). It's not in itself a game changer but sends a signal.
CGT on all house sales is going to be one of the big changes - downsizing and taking the profit on the family home funds retirement (or at least the preferred retirement lifestyle) for many but to what extent is any of that "earned" or simply a function of the housing market and inflation? Mr & Mrs Stodge Senior bought their four bedroom house in the mid 60s for £10k and sold it nearly forty years for over £500k. Now, that's a decent return in anybody's language but to what extent was that anything other than supply and demand plus inflation?
My one disappointment with yesterday's announcements was social care. Perhaps Labour have their own ideas - the Dilnot commission has been around almost as long as the Conservatives were last in power but I presume the problem isn't a solution in and of itself but a politically sellable solution (any workable proposal can be a suicide note).
Labour are the ones holding the hot potato or more accurately the grenade with the pin out - IF CGT reduces or closes down the option of funding a retirement lifestyle from asset appreciation how do we get the various schemes and savings plans out there to provide the kind of retirement lifestyle to which most aspire or will that inherently force people to work well into their 70s?
Reeves' announcement this afternoon will be devastating news for many towns where the the Tories had promised to build new hospitals, including Ambridge, Camberwick Green, Market Blandings, Royston Vasey and Walmington on Sea
If so, that might be awkward all round.
It's odd that the alternative is run bike run, why not have the swim in a swimming pool (shortened course/late at night if availablity is a problem)?
They’ll say they got unlucky with heavy rain in the last week, but even an act of God wasn’t going to delay the Olympics.
any idea where the source of the rumour is this time around...
Part of the deal to have no industrial action is for the payboards to come up with a reasonable figure.
The A303 (Stonehenge) and A27 projects weren't fiction, just highly contentious...
Genuinely curious, because I can see it going either way.
On one hand, cost of living and pressure from other prestige professions is greater in London.
On the other, the harder-to-fill posts are probably in Grimton General, Redwall.
Possibly, the two cancel out.
Really? How hot is that water going to get?
Cancelling fictional hospitals is fine, but not upgrading roads, e.g. a27 bypass means lower growth in future.
On the plus side, it's really good progress on doctors strike, and I'm delighted Labour is standing up for itself on the economy and rightfully blaming the Tories for the mess they've inherited. Beefing up the OBR to investigate when they're being lied to also seems necessary and would be a good thing for our institutions.
Reacting to the announcement, a spokesperson for Walberton Parish Council, said: "The Government's decision regarding the A27 bypass is an extremely welcome one for the villages of Walberton, Binsted and Fontwell, which were all adversely affected by the proposed Grey route.
"The route was the longest, most expensive, most environmentally disruptive route of all options presented and, whilst we recognise the need to solve the A27 problem at Crossbush, we hope that the government will now consider cheaper, more sensible and more sustainable solutions."
Now that may be a few people but it carries as much weight as the A303 in the story...
Look at the day rates being charged by some professions especially those related to construction (aided by shortages) and it's clear some self-employed have done very well out of the post-Covid period and if Labour intend to "build build, build" will no doubt continue to prosper.
I did my time in the public sector and for many staff at many councils the 2010s was a decade of real term pay cuts - often pay freezes against a backdrop of inflation and even if you do get a 3-5% pay increase in 2021-22, that's not much use with inflation running at double that so the public sector might argue (with conviction) they need a big wage rise to get back even to 2010 levels.
How though can Councils pay workers more when even the most well-run are under huge financial pressure because of the failure of now successive Governments to tackle the issue of adult social care? @MisterBedfordshire and others might claim the system is being abused (it probably is in some cases) but SEN is also about qualified teachers (a shortage) and appropriate accommodation (another shortage). There is an issue about transport provision which needs to be addresses.
All of these should have been done a long, long time ago, and it’s disappointing to see a new government kick the can just as the last one did. And the one before that.
An absolute case of French vanity, wanting to show off Paris being more important than sporting integrity.
I'm laughing because Paris tried to clean up the river on the cheap. It was a gamble, but it was not doing the job properly. This was pointed out in civ eng circles a couple of years ago. They've been unlucky that there's been heavy rain, but they took that risk. Note that the 'solution' put in place for the games cost a billion euros, yet appears not to work very well. Remember, this is happening in summer, when rainfall is relatively low, yet the system has been overrun.
It's a shit solution to shit.
The options are to run the mens' swim after the women's tomorrow; run them both on an alternate date in a few days; or do a duathlon. There was talk about swimming on another river (the Meuse?) , but I presume that will be logistically difficult, as the bike and run courses would need to be nearby, even with split transitions - and then there's all the broadcasting stuff as well.
I don't know why they couldn't do it in a pool: I assume an access problem to a 50-metre pool, and the same problem with the bike and run courses needing to be nearby.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw5yze5k500o
So far at least, the police and army remain foursquare behind him, so I don't see the protests succeeding.
One interesting development is that seven South American nations have broken off diplomatic relations, including Argentina. That's maybe a sign of patience wearing thin.
Also interesting is that Brazil and Mexico may be about to weigh in, along with Colombia:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-29/brazil-mexico-colombia-negotiate-joint-statement-on-venezuela-election?embedded-checkout=true
That would leave Maduro completely isolated in the region with only Cuba pretending to find the results credible.
Whether it will make a difference to the bastard's grip on power I don't know (I suspect not unless he moves to an actual war) but it's hard to imagine it will help him.
As for HS2 - my opinion is that once it was designed it should have been built as is - but Euston should be being advertised as the 2/3 different projects it is so that people know where the money is going...
There are a handful of Conservative -'til-I-die posters on here who are critical of this government after three weeks simply because "Labour are always shit". The irony being, did they not notice the Conservative Government from at least 2019.
Are unfunded pay rises real pay rises?
Because we've had a hell of a lot of them recently.
Highly likely to somewhat upset the rest of the bond market, even if they insist they’re not defaulting on more regular bonds.
If your posts are indicative of the quality we can expect post July 5th, I'm off to ConHome for a more measured and balanced insight.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1rr1qqqny0o
Delays in food hygiene inspections a 'serious public health issue'
Consumers are being exposed to an increased risk of food poisoning because of delays in food hygiene inspections, a BBC investigation has found.
Analysis shows one in five restaurants and takeaways had not been seen by food inspectors for more than two years.
Environmental health teams say a recruitment crisis and a backlog from the pandemic are behind the trend.
The public services union Unison said it was a "serious public health issue".
A spokesman said: “Inspections are now so delayed that it’s perfectly possible for food businesses with shoddy hygiene practices to operate with little fear of ever being caught.”
I'm also laughing at the French mayor, who said she would swim in the river to prove it was clean. The date for this was moved a couple of times until the water was clean enough - just. And now, a few days later, it is not.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/crg5z6qv4zlo
Half a million still gets you more house in Reading compared to say Darlo, although scanning rightmove it *feels* like northern housing has moved up in price recently.
That is a multiple stage project
1) build HS track to outskirts join local network
2) bring trains into the existing station
3) build track through Florence (underground)
4) build the station...
They are at 2 and 3/4 are currently being built for 2.7 billion euros to be finished in 2028.
We can't do this because we run things at capacity but we should be looking at improving Euston / Crewe / Piccadilly as separate projects.
Especially as Euston has 2 different parts to it and the original plan had the underground improvements included in the CrossRail 2 scheme. Which again is wrong it should be 4 separate projects
1) HS track into Euston
2) Euston station improvements
3) Euston Tfl capacity improvements
4) Cross Rail 2..
Instead 3 has been bundled into whichever combination of 2/4 arrives first.
Incidentally yesterday evening, I met a lady (older than me, I think) who is just doing two half-ironman 70.3 races in two consecutive weekends. She did one last week, and is doing one next week. A few years ago, whilst training for her first Olympic distance, she was in a bike crash (*) and broke her neck. She was back swimming a couple of months later.
People are amazing.
(*) The driver's fault...
Anyone get the music reference?
Clickbait.