"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
So is 15 years 51 weeks 'slam dunk textbook neglect' but 16 years 0 weeks okay ?
How hard are the dividing lines drawn ?
The overwhelmingly important factor, from the parents/risk perspective, surely, is a critical character judgment on the "Friend"
?
The internet (indeed, people in general) is/are a terrible judge of the variables that actually matter.
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
Think about this for a minute......you even put "graduate level" jobs in quotes. Should we be alright with the only way to get what are jobs that often could be done by a school leaver with A levels behind a barrier that puts someone 40k or more in debt so they can earn not much more than minimum wage?
University exams should be made open, so anyone can pay a reasonable fee and take them. Where they get the knowledge and at what cost then becomes up to them, I suspect within a decade most would get it online at a fraction of the cost, often alongside full time work. .
Which is how many professional level qualifications have always been obtained.
Including medicine. Until around the early to mid-20th Century, most doctors did not have degrees. They'd do what amounted to an apprenticeship in medical schools and then do exams set by various professional bodies. If you look at a medical degree today, after the first year or two, it still looks suspiciously like an apprenticeship.
Mmm, there are probably a lot of jobs where a bit of post A level theoretical study and a big chunk of on the job mentoring would serve people better than three or four years of pure academic study. (I'm thinking in particular of my own field of computer programming where the academic side and the industry side don't match up very well -- a bit of theoretical grounding is helpful but you don't need three years. Indeed I did two years maths and then a year of compsci, and it's hard to say I'd have been any worse at the job if I'd skipped those two years of maths entirely...) But as a society we seem to be stuck in a situation where the degree is almost entirely acting as a "filter out 50% of applicants and be a signal that somebody can spend three years on a task without too much supervision and get it done".
You only really need a degree to be a barrister, academic, teach A Level or IB in secondary schools, be a doctor or surgeon or be a RC priest or Anglican Vicar or Bishop or a senior civil service mandarin (though the latter mainly due to Oxbridge filter). Every other professional or skilled job can be done via professional exams or apprenticeships and learning on the job and largely was 100 years ago when less than 5% went to and graduated from a university and even some PMs like Disraeli, Callaghan, Major and Churchill and Macdonald and Lloyd George often never went to university (indeed Lloyd George was a solicitor but never got a degree)
Even Jesus Christ, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and the late Queen never got a degree
Brilliant, as ever. PB at its best. I don't think there's any other site in the world where I could read "Even Jesus Christ....... never got a degree".
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
So is 15 years 51 weeks 'slam dunk textbook neglect' but 16 years 0 weeks okay ?
How hard are the dividing lines drawn ?
It's probably OK if you are posh. See also Madeleine McCann
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
They're not that quick to put people into foster care generally, being both disproportionate as a response to such a first offense and given limited fostering resources. You must have an abundance of carers in your area.
It would be assessed on risk, certainly with any previous it would be serious, but if the social work team decided there was a safeguarding issue they wouldn't take the risk. Certainly if something had gone wrong on the trip and the boy was compromised or injured social services would look at the safeguarding of any other minors.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
You should also be well aware of the threshold at which intervention happens, and what the average experience of families they have. Going into houses that stink of dog poo and pee, dysfunctional parenting that is borderline non existent, persistent drug abuse across the entire family. Grinding awful abuse.
And letting your son go on holiday with his mate. Utter nonsense. Some 15yr olds I wouldnt let go to the shops on their own and some would have no issues sailing around the world. There are many on here who would be quite happy for all 15yr olds + 1 day to have the vote.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
TBF (slightly) fair to the Tories, iirc Gordon Brown was the man who introduced a routine misleading rhetoric branding revenue expenditure as "investment", during his interminable budget groan-o-logues in New Labour days.
I'm not getting into returns on investments in even bigger roads than we have already, but I will note that many of them deliver nothing like the promised returns, any many less than the money tipped down the hole, and that investment in getting traffic off roads (ie active travel schemes) often deliver double or treble the returns.
DavidL is right about the A96 - I reckon a number of bypasses would do more to boost the Scottish economy than dualling the A9 by allowing better movement of goods between industries in the north and allowing our town centres to become attractive again. The obsession with the A9 has distracted people from thinking about what is the best use of money/borrowing.
The new tram line in Edinburgh is going to cost £2 billion. That is probably clear value-for-money, but just imagine what you could do with £2 billion for cycling and walking infrastructure, or even investment in local bus services elsewhere in Scotland.
I'm not sure if the Edinburgh Tram is a good example - how much better could that have been done?
I think it would be quite interesting to see how Scotland tackles such a scheme now, given that they now have a committed active travel % of overall transport budget (if it survives).
I'd invest 0.2% of the money in a dashcam upload portal.
IIRC there is a company investigating applying Self-Propelled Modular Transporter (SPMT) tech to multi unit "bendy buses".
That is, by using computer controlled steering on each unit, a "road-train" can be created that can corner etc, despite the length. It runs on a "virtual track", a predesigned route
The idea is that you get much of benefits of trams, without the tracks or overhead wires.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
We werent saving money by not paying junior doctors an extra £4k per year. When they went on strike we instead paid experienced doctors up to £3k per shift to cover for them! And cancelled many thousands of operations leaving people not working and businesses across the country having to deal with that. It is a false saving that only exists on a spreadsheet, not the real world.
Apples and pears. We pay to cover their shifts once or twice. We pay them the additional salary forever. When Universities are struggling to fill their medicine courses we will know we have a problem. Medicine is not as well paid as it was, the junior doctors are right about that, but its still pretty attractive.
But we need 2x the number of medical staff that the universities are providing. And they get training here and then go to Australia and Canada as we offer good training but poor early career wages. It really doesn't make any sense.
Easily solved.
Get training here then you either have to work here for an agreed length of time or you get charged for the cost of the training.
The problem is one of enforcement: how do you get £100,000 back from someone who has left the country? And, unfortunately, it's not like the Australians have any incentive to be helpful. They are, after all, following a policy of not paying for medical training.
With west africa and India going , "yeah, it's a bit shit, isnt it?"
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
What is better value for money? Employ the number of teachers the school needs to function optimally and deliver excellent education? Or cut that budget by 30% and then spend a further 50% on supply staff and crisis management?
You’re right - we’re spending a vast amount of money. On the wrong things. To save money long term we need to spend a little more now - to hire the staff needed - which then allows you to not need to spend the money on crisis management.
It’s just basic adding. That you Tories no longer understand or explains an awful lot about why you got hammered and now and listing after Robert Jenrick as leader.
The fallacy of big spenders, if only we spent a bit more, then it would pay for itself. If only we had more teachers, if only we had more nurses (we have more nurses and we have more teachers). Just the left's equivalent of those who say we should reduce all taxes and we will get more revenue. Both only work in certain circumstances, and at the margins when you have tilted the balance away, not as a matter of normal policy.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
So is 15 years 51 weeks 'slam dunk textbook neglect' but 16 years 0 weeks okay ?
How hard are the dividing lines drawn ?
I can think of cases where 15 years 51 weeks would be the wrong side of a hard dividing line.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
What is better value for money? Employ the number of teachers the school needs to function optimally and deliver excellent education? Or cut that budget by 30% and then spend a further 50% on supply staff and crisis management?
You’re right - we’re spending a vast amount of money. On the wrong things. To save money long term we need to spend a little more now - to hire the staff needed - which then allows you to not need to spend the money on crisis management.
It’s just basic adding. That you Tories no longer understand or explains an awful lot about why you got hammered and now and listing after Robert Jenrick as leader.
And it's worse than that.
When the crisis comes along, the standard response is to grab cash from the capital budget to provide revenue to get over this week's problem. Which is rational in the short term, but calamitous if you do it year after year.
Because the ways to improve productivity are either to shout at people to WORK HARDER, or spend money to provide them with tools to do their jobs better. And even the people doing the shouting now have sore throats, because there's been no investment in voice amplification equipment.
Its not just management who will reduce capital investment to pay for current costs.
Workers will happily do so as well if it means higher pay than otherwise.
Workers only ever get good pay settlements as a last resort, usually because they are essential and in short supply. Lack of investment is almost invariably the product of upper management penny pinching, so that they can pay the dividends demanded by shareholders and cream some of the profit off in higher pay and bonuses for themselves.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
Think about this for a minute......you even put "graduate level" jobs in quotes. Should we be alright with the only way to get what are jobs that often could be done by a school leaver with A levels behind a barrier that puts someone 40k or more in debt so they can earn not much more than minimum wage?
University exams should be made open, so anyone can pay a reasonable fee and take them. Where they get the knowledge and at what cost then becomes up to them, I suspect within a decade most would get it online at a fraction of the cost, often alongside full time work. .
Which is how many professional level qualifications have always been obtained.
Including medicine. Until around the early to mid-20th Century, most doctors did not have degrees. They'd do what amounted to an apprenticeship in medical schools and then do exams set by various professional bodies. If you look at a medical degree today, after the first year or two, it still looks suspiciously like an apprenticeship.
Mmm, there are probably a lot of jobs where a bit of post A level theoretical study and a big chunk of on the job mentoring would serve people better than three or four years of pure academic study. (I'm thinking in particular of my own field of computer programming where the academic side and the industry side don't match up very well -- a bit of theoretical grounding is helpful but you don't need three years. Indeed I did two years maths and then a year of compsci, and it's hard to say I'd have been any worse at the job if I'd skipped those two years of maths entirely...) But as a society we seem to be stuck in a situation where the degree is almost entirely acting as a "filter out 50% of applicants and be a signal that somebody can spend three years on a task without too much supervision and get it done".
You only really need a degree to be a barrister, academic, teach A Level or IB in secondary schools, be a doctor or surgeon or be a RC priest or Anglican Vicar or Bishop or a senior civil service mandarin (though the latter mainly due to Oxbridge filter). Every other professional or skilled job can be done via professional exams or apprenticeships and learning on the job and largely was 100 years ago when less than 5% went to and graduated from a university and even some PMs like Disraeli, Callaghan, Major and Churchill and Macdonald and Lloyd George often never went to university (indeed Lloyd George was a solicitor but never got a degree)
Even Jesus Christ, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and the late Queen never got a degree
Brilliant, as ever. PB at its best. I don't think there's any other site in the world where I could read "Even Jesus Christ....... never got a degree".
Important information though - deciding whether he would have a degree or not is an important consideration when trying to figure out what UK political party he would have supported.
How would a non-university educated skilled tradesman of religious character in his 30s have voted in 2024?
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
You should also be well aware of the threshold at which intervention happens, and what the average experience of families they have. Going into houses that stink of dog poo and pee, dysfunctional parenting that is borderline non existent, persistent drug abuse across the entire family. Grinding awful abuse.
And letting your son go on holiday with his mate. Utter nonsense. Some 15yr olds I wouldnt let go to the shops on their own and some would have no issues sailing around the world. There are many on here who would be quite happy for all 15yr olds + 1 day to have the vote.
Can I learn to drive on Britain's roads a week before my seventeenth birthday?
If something very serious had happened to the boy on holiday abroad with another minor I suspect the matter would be taken seriously after the event. Any other children in the care of the mother would be reviewed and a police and social services investigation launched into the boy's safety. You are making a sweeping assumption that a child living in a comfortable home must be safe. That is social services 's job to identify. National treasures are not exempt from scrutiny.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
What is better value for money? Employ the number of teachers the school needs to function optimally and deliver excellent education? Or cut that budget by 30% and then spend a further 50% on supply staff and crisis management?
You’re right - we’re spending a vast amount of money. On the wrong things. To save money long term we need to spend a little more now - to hire the staff needed - which then allows you to not need to spend the money on crisis management.
It’s just basic adding. That you Tories no longer understand or explains an awful lot about why you got hammered and now and listing after Robert Jenrick as leader.
The fallacy of big spenders, if only we spent a bit more, then it would pay for itself. If only we had more teachers, if only we had more nurses (we have more nurses and we have more teachers). Just the left's equivalent of those who say we should reduce all taxes and we will get more revenue. Both only work in certain circumstances, and at the margins when you have tilted the balance away, not as a matter of normal policy.
It’s clearly pointless to not employ enough teachers to meet the needs set by central government because of government cuts & then backfill the gaps with supply teachers. You just end up spending more for poorer level of service!
A quick note for anyone who works with knives, especially if you do outdoor, small holding, survival etc.
There are a new set of knife regulations coming in in September. TBH they are more coherent than previous versions, but may impact knives that may have been regarded as tools,or collectors items. Since even possession is being outlawed on these, police will not be lenient if they find something incidentally.
Things that are being banned:
- Knives with more than one point - aimed at Zombie or fantasy knives. - Knives with a blade over 8" long, with a serrated section more than 2" long, as for example on the reverse edge of knives inspired by the Rambo films. (One answer: grind it to be a normal edge, or hand it in.) - Knives with more than one hole through the blade.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
Is there a specific word for that? If not, there should be.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
We werent saving money by not paying junior doctors an extra £4k per year. When they went on strike we instead paid experienced doctors up to £3k per shift to cover for them! And cancelled many thousands of operations leaving people not working and businesses across the country having to deal with that. It is a false saving that only exists on a spreadsheet, not the real world.
Apples and pears. We pay to cover their shifts once or twice. We pay them the additional salary forever. When Universities are struggling to fill their medicine courses we will know we have a problem. Medicine is not as well paid as it was, the junior doctors are right about that, but its still pretty attractive.
But we need 2x the number of medical staff that the universities are providing. And they get training here and then go to Australia and Canada as we offer good training but poor early career wages. It really doesn't make any sense.
Easily solved.
Get training here then you either have to work here for an agreed length of time or you get charged for the cost of the training.
The problem is one of enforcement: how do you get £100,000 back from someone who has left the country? And, unfortunately, it's not like the Australians have any incentive to be helpful. They are, after all, following a policy of not paying for medical training.
Its Australia not Russia.
Or do contracts and laws not apply in Melbourne and Sydney ?
Likewise the NHS should be willing to deduct money from Indian doctors and Nigerian nurses if they owe that from training in their home countries.
A quick note for anyone who works with knives, especially if you do outdoor, small holding, survival etc.
There are a new set of knife regulations coming in in September. TBH they are more coherent than previous versions, but may impact knives that may have been regarded as tools,or collectors items. Since even possession is being outlawed on these, police will not be lenient if they find something incidentally.
Things that are being banned:
- Knives with more than one point - aimed at Zombie or fantasy knives. - Knives with a blade over 8" long, with a serrated section more than 2" long, as for example on the reverse edge of knives inspired by the Rambo films. (One answer: grind it to be a normal edge, or hand it in.) - Knives with more than one hole through the blade.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
What is better value for money? Employ the number of teachers the school needs to function optimally and deliver excellent education? Or cut that budget by 30% and then spend a further 50% on supply staff and crisis management?
You’re right - we’re spending a vast amount of money. On the wrong things. To save money long term we need to spend a little more now - to hire the staff needed - which then allows you to not need to spend the money on crisis management.
It’s just basic adding. That you Tories no longer understand or explains an awful lot about why you got hammered and now and listing after Robert Jenrick as leader.
The fallacy of big spenders, if only we spent a bit more, then it would pay for itself. If only we had more teachers, if only we had more nurses (we have more nurses and we have more teachers). Just the left's equivalent of those who say we should reduce all taxes and we will get more revenue. Both only work in certain circumstances, and at the margins when you have tilted the balance away, not as a matter of normal policy.
It’s clearly pointless to not employ enough teachers to meet the needs set by central government because of government cuts & then backfill the gaps with supply teachers. You just end up spending more for poorer level of service!
Which part of this do you not understand?
There's 27,000 more FTE employed teachers now than fifteen years ago. Can you point to the cuts?
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
Think about this for a minute......you even put "graduate level" jobs in quotes. Should we be alright with the only way to get what are jobs that often could be done by a school leaver with A levels behind a barrier that puts someone 40k or more in debt so they can earn not much more than minimum wage?
University exams should be made open, so anyone can pay a reasonable fee and take them. Where they get the knowledge and at what cost then becomes up to them, I suspect within a decade most would get it online at a fraction of the cost, often alongside full time work. .
Which is how many professional level qualifications have always been obtained.
Including medicine. Until around the early to mid-20th Century, most doctors did not have degrees. They'd do what amounted to an apprenticeship in medical schools and then do exams set by various professional bodies. If you look at a medical degree today, after the first year or two, it still looks suspiciously like an apprenticeship.
Mmm, there are probably a lot of jobs where a bit of post A level theoretical study and a big chunk of on the job mentoring would serve people better than three or four years of pure academic study. (I'm thinking in particular of my own field of computer programming where the academic side and the industry side don't match up very well -- a bit of theoretical grounding is helpful but you don't need three years. Indeed I did two years maths and then a year of compsci, and it's hard to say I'd have been any worse at the job if I'd skipped those two years of maths entirely...) But as a society we seem to be stuck in a situation where the degree is almost entirely acting as a "filter out 50% of applicants and be a signal that somebody can spend three years on a task without too much supervision and get it done".
You only really need a degree to be a barrister, academic, teach A Level or IB in secondary schools, be a doctor or surgeon or be a RC priest or Anglican Vicar or Bishop or a senior civil service mandarin (though the latter mainly due to Oxbridge filter). Every other professional or skilled job can be done via professional exams or apprenticeships and learning on the job and largely was 100 years ago when less than 5% went to and graduated from a university and even some PMs like Disraeli, Callaghan, Major and Churchill and Macdonald and Lloyd George often never went to university (indeed Lloyd George was a solicitor but never got a degree)
Even Jesus Christ and the late Queen never got a degree
So if your daddy is powerful it all works out?
(I do agree it's ridiculous how having a degree is deemed necessary in many instances though)
Jesus was a trained carpenter, he would be classified skilled working class by the ONS, he was a preacher and prophet and Messiah but not even a Parish priest let alone a Bishop, he just founded the Church
That's true, he did at least learn his craft long before he embarked on all that preaching business at the end.
Indeed, he had a practical job, it was the Pharisees who had all the legal knowledge and Torah and book learning
A bit misleading. People were all of: Pharisee, massively learned and had proper jobs. St Paul had exactly that background.
If Jesus's background was within one of the identifiable Jewish groups it may well have been Pharisaic. We don't know. Fairly certain is that his background was from one of strong imminent messianic expectation.
A quick note for anyone who works with knives, especially if you do outdoor, small holding, survival etc.
There are a new set of knife regulations coming in in September. TBH they are more coherent than previous versions, but may impact knives that may have been regarded as tools,or collectors items. Since even possession is being outlawed on these, police will not be lenient if they find something incidentally.
Things that are being banned:
- Knives with more than one point - aimed at Zombie or fantasy knives. - Knives with a blade over 8" long, with a serrated section more than 2" long, as for example on the reverse edge of knives inspired by the Rambo films. (One answer: grind it to be a normal edge, or hand it in.) - Knives with more than one hole through the blade.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
What is better value for money? Employ the number of teachers the school needs to function optimally and deliver excellent education? Or cut that budget by 30% and then spend a further 50% on supply staff and crisis management?
You’re right - we’re spending a vast amount of money. On the wrong things. To save money long term we need to spend a little more now - to hire the staff needed - which then allows you to not need to spend the money on crisis management.
It’s just basic adding. That you Tories no longer understand or explains an awful lot about why you got hammered and now and listing after Robert Jenrick as leader.
The fallacy of big spenders, if only we spent a bit more, then it would pay for itself. If only we had more teachers, if only we had more nurses (we have more nurses and we have more teachers). Just the left's equivalent of those who say we should reduce all taxes and we will get more revenue. Both only work in certain circumstances, and at the margins when you have tilted the balance away, not as a matter of normal policy.
It’s clearly pointless to not employ enough teachers to meet the needs set by central government because of government cuts & then backfill the gaps with supply teachers. You just end up spending more for poorer level of service!
Which part of this do you not understand?
That would indeed be inefficient.
But how often does that happen ?
Obviously supply teachers have a role in emergency situations or when there isn't demand for a regular teacher at an individual school.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
Outrageous. All reports have to be taken seriously of course, but the prospect of maliciously false reports facing consequence does not really get my free speech defences tingling.
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
Think about this for a minute......you even put "graduate level" jobs in quotes. Should we be alright with the only way to get what are jobs that often could be done by a school leaver with A levels behind a barrier that puts someone 40k or more in debt so they can earn not much more than minimum wage?
University exams should be made open, so anyone can pay a reasonable fee and take them. Where they get the knowledge and at what cost then becomes up to them, I suspect within a decade most would get it online at a fraction of the cost, often alongside full time work. .
Which is how many professional level qualifications have always been obtained.
Including medicine. Until around the early to mid-20th Century, most doctors did not have degrees. They'd do what amounted to an apprenticeship in medical schools and then do exams set by various professional bodies. If you look at a medical degree today, after the first year or two, it still looks suspiciously like an apprenticeship.
Mmm, there are probably a lot of jobs where a bit of post A level theoretical study and a big chunk of on the job mentoring would serve people better than three or four years of pure academic study. (I'm thinking in particular of my own field of computer programming where the academic side and the industry side don't match up very well -- a bit of theoretical grounding is helpful but you don't need three years. Indeed I did two years maths and then a year of compsci, and it's hard to say I'd have been any worse at the job if I'd skipped those two years of maths entirely...) But as a society we seem to be stuck in a situation where the degree is almost entirely acting as a "filter out 50% of applicants and be a signal that somebody can spend three years on a task without too much supervision and get it done".
You only really need a degree to be a barrister, academic, teach A Level or IB in secondary schools, be a doctor or surgeon or be a RC priest or Anglican Vicar or Bishop or a senior civil service mandarin (though the latter mainly due to Oxbridge filter). Every other professional or skilled job can be done via professional exams or apprenticeships and learning on the job and largely was 100 years ago when less than 5% went to and graduated from a university and even some PMs like Disraeli, Callaghan, Major and Churchill and Macdonald and Lloyd George often never went to university (indeed Lloyd George was a solicitor but never got a degree)
Even Jesus Christ and the late Queen never got a degree
So if your daddy is powerful it all works out?
(I do agree it's ridiculous how having a degree is deemed necessary in many instances though)
Jesus was a trained carpenter, he would be classified skilled working class by the ONS, he was a preacher and prophet and Messiah but not even a Parish priest let alone a Bishop, he just founded the Church
That's true, he did at least learn his craft long before he embarked on all that preaching business at the end.
Indeed, he had a practical job, it was the Pharisees who had all the legal knowledge and Torah and book learning
A bit misleading. People were all of: Pharisee, massively learned and had proper jobs. St Paul had exactly that background.
If Jesus's background was within one of the identifiable Jewish groups it may well have been Pharisaic. We don't know. Fairly certain is that his background was from one of strong imminent messianic expectation.
Again, Luke 2 41-52. He was a theological whizz kid by the age of 12.
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
Think about this for a minute......you even put "graduate level" jobs in quotes. Should we be alright with the only way to get what are jobs that often could be done by a school leaver with A levels behind a barrier that puts someone 40k or more in debt so they can earn not much more than minimum wage?
University exams should be made open, so anyone can pay a reasonable fee and take them. Where they get the knowledge and at what cost then becomes up to them, I suspect within a decade most would get it online at a fraction of the cost, often alongside full time work. .
Which is how many professional level qualifications have always been obtained.
Including medicine. Until around the early to mid-20th Century, most doctors did not have degrees. They'd do what amounted to an apprenticeship in medical schools and then do exams set by various professional bodies. If you look at a medical degree today, after the first year or two, it still looks suspiciously like an apprenticeship.
Mmm, there are probably a lot of jobs where a bit of post A level theoretical study and a big chunk of on the job mentoring would serve people better than three or four years of pure academic study. (I'm thinking in particular of my own field of computer programming where the academic side and the industry side don't match up very well -- a bit of theoretical grounding is helpful but you don't need three years. Indeed I did two years maths and then a year of compsci, and it's hard to say I'd have been any worse at the job if I'd skipped those two years of maths entirely...) But as a society we seem to be stuck in a situation where the degree is almost entirely acting as a "filter out 50% of applicants and be a signal that somebody can spend three years on a task without too much supervision and get it done".
You only really need a degree to be a barrister, academic, teach A Level or IB in secondary schools, be a doctor or surgeon or be a RC priest or Anglican Vicar or Bishop or a senior civil service mandarin (though the latter mainly due to Oxbridge filter). Every other professional or skilled job can be done via professional exams or apprenticeships and learning on the job and largely was 100 years ago when less than 5% went to and graduated from a university and even some PMs like Disraeli, Callaghan, Major and Churchill and Macdonald and Lloyd George often never went to university (indeed Lloyd George was a solicitor but never got a degree)
Even Jesus Christ and the late Queen never got a degree
So if your daddy is powerful it all works out?
(I do agree it's ridiculous how having a degree is deemed necessary in many instances though)
Jesus was a trained carpenter, he would be classified skilled working class by the ONS, he was a preacher and prophet and Messiah but not even a Parish priest let alone a Bishop, he just founded the Church
That's true, he did at least learn his craft long before he embarked on all that preaching business at the end.
Indeed, he had a practical job, it was the Pharisees who had all the legal knowledge and Torah and book learning
"The app is accused of failure to cooperate with law enforcement over drug trafficking, child sexual content and fraud."
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
Think about this for a minute......you even put "graduate level" jobs in quotes. Should we be alright with the only way to get what are jobs that often could be done by a school leaver with A levels behind a barrier that puts someone 40k or more in debt so they can earn not much more than minimum wage?
University exams should be made open, so anyone can pay a reasonable fee and take them. Where they get the knowledge and at what cost then becomes up to them, I suspect within a decade most would get it online at a fraction of the cost, often alongside full time work. .
Which is how many professional level qualifications have always been obtained.
Including medicine. Until around the early to mid-20th Century, most doctors did not have degrees. They'd do what amounted to an apprenticeship in medical schools and then do exams set by various professional bodies. If you look at a medical degree today, after the first year or two, it still looks suspiciously like an apprenticeship.
Mmm, there are probably a lot of jobs where a bit of post A level theoretical study and a big chunk of on the job mentoring would serve people better than three or four years of pure academic study. (I'm thinking in particular of my own field of computer programming where the academic side and the industry side don't match up very well -- a bit of theoretical grounding is helpful but you don't need three years. Indeed I did two years maths and then a year of compsci, and it's hard to say I'd have been any worse at the job if I'd skipped those two years of maths entirely...) But as a society we seem to be stuck in a situation where the degree is almost entirely acting as a "filter out 50% of applicants and be a signal that somebody can spend three years on a task without too much supervision and get it done".
You only really need a degree to be a barrister, academic, teach A Level or IB in secondary schools, be a doctor or surgeon or be a RC priest or Anglican Vicar or Bishop or a senior civil service mandarin (though the latter mainly due to Oxbridge filter). Every other professional or skilled job can be done via professional exams or apprenticeships and learning on the job and largely was 100 years ago when less than 5% went to and graduated from a university and even some PMs like Disraeli, Callaghan, Major and Churchill and Macdonald and Lloyd George often never went to university (indeed Lloyd George was a solicitor but never got a degree)
Even Jesus Christ and the late Queen never got a degree
So if your daddy is powerful it all works out?
(I do agree it's ridiculous how having a degree is deemed necessary in many instances though)
Jesus was a trained carpenter, he would be classified skilled working class by the ONS, he was a preacher and prophet and Messiah but not even a Parish priest let alone a Bishop, he just founded the Church
That's true, he did at least learn his craft long before he embarked on all that preaching business at the end.
Indeed, he had a practical job, it was the Pharisees who had all the legal knowledge and Torah and book learning
A bit misleading. People were all of: Pharisee, massively learned and had proper jobs. St Paul had exactly that background.
If Jesus's background was within one of the identifiable Jewish groups it may well have been Pharisaic. We don't know. Fairly certain is that his background was from one of strong imminent messianic expectation.
Again, Luke 2 41-52. He was a theological whizz kid by the age of 12.
Sure, child prodigy and all that, but at least he worked for a living as a man, he wasn't full time preaching from a young age.
But it's more complicated than that - and more interesting.
In the Modern. Proper way of managing a company, you try and outsource everything. This traditionally meant that you didn't carry the risk of developing sub assemblies and components - the contractor did. And when you changed a design or stopped making it, they had the obsolete factory.
This ends up with a vast pyramid of contractors, who in turn, subcontract.
In the 1960s, when everything was on paper, this had the advantage that contractors delivered a black box *they designed*. Because keeping the whole design in a single set of drawings and specification would be impossible.
On the political side, this means you can subtly distribute spend to all the parts of the country where the relevant politicians come from. And the subcontractors donating to the politicians looks much better than a zillion dollar cheque from Boeing.
The problem is that each layer in the contracting pyramid needs profit and, more importantly, the communication between the parent company and the contractors can easily become slow and adversarial.
In the case of the door falling off the airliner, Boeing had split off a huge chunk of its aircarft making to form a company called Spirit. Communication between Boeing nd Sprint was poor. When you added in Boeing management misusing the defect repair process to do quality control.....
In the case of Starliner, the thrusters that are failing were outsourced to Aerojet. With a poorly thought out spec. Boeing then started arguing with Aerojet about spec changes - Boeing wanted Aerojet to swallow all the extra costs.
These thrusters were then integrated into poorly designed enclosures (designed by another contractor) - they put too many thrusters and fuel lines next to each other in a box that held the heat in. As the cherry on top, the heating was poorly modelled, without physical testing.
This model of development nearly destroyed the Apollo program - see Apollo 204 (aka Apollo 1). But it continued to be used for big projects and has created a number of epic failures.
The skill lies presumably in knowing what, and what not to outsource. And how to control the risks. ‘Not invented here’ syndrome can also be toxic to successful businesses.
And after all, startups like SpaceX or Anduril probably couldn’t get started without outsourcing.
The trap that you need to avoid there is doing so much outsourcing that you no longer have the in-house expertise to make those "should we outsource this?" judgements or even to manage the outsourced parts successfully.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
What is better value for money? Employ the number of teachers the school needs to function optimally and deliver excellent education? Or cut that budget by 30% and then spend a further 50% on supply staff and crisis management?
You’re right - we’re spending a vast amount of money. On the wrong things. To save money long term we need to spend a little more now - to hire the staff needed - which then allows you to not need to spend the money on crisis management.
It’s just basic adding. That you Tories no longer understand or explains an awful lot about why you got hammered and now and listing after Robert Jenrick as leader.
The fallacy of big spenders, if only we spent a bit more, then it would pay for itself. If only we had more teachers, if only we had more nurses (we have more nurses and we have more teachers). Just the left's equivalent of those who say we should reduce all taxes and we will get more revenue. Both only work in certain circumstances, and at the margins when you have tilted the balance away, not as a matter of normal policy.
It’s clearly pointless to not employ enough teachers to meet the needs set by central government because of government cuts & then backfill the gaps with supply teachers. You just end up spending more for poorer level of service!
Which part of this do you not understand?
There's 27,000 more FTE employed teachers now than fifteen years ago. Can you point to the cuts?
You’re missing the point. Again.
The government mandates certain staffing levels: If the government then deliberately under staffs the service, forcing the service managers to employ contract staff to deliver the mandated staffing, this will cost more overall than just employing the required number of staff in the first place (contract staff need extra management & almost always cost more per hour to employ). The exception is where you can get away with paying your contract staff much less than your permanent staff - but this doesn’t seem to be the case in education or health care.
If you want to argue that the government should reduce staffing levels, have at it. But that’s a separate argument.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
A moment's reflection will reveal the obvious truth that no change in the law can ever prevent person X always and everywhere being able to make a false and, if they want anonymous, report about person Y. The unfortunate public servants charged with dealing with all this (police, social workers etc) have to follow multitudes of these all the time. If they neglected this and let a true one slip through resulting in, say the death of a child, the Daily Mail will be first in the long queue to attack.
BTW I remember Ted Heath once commenting on social change, and mention that he went alone to France at the age of 11. My wife at the age of 9 travelled with only another 9 year old by train from northern England to Edinburgh in about 1964. This was normal.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
So is 15 years 51 weeks 'slam dunk textbook neglect' but 16 years 0 weeks okay ?
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
What is better value for money? Employ the number of teachers the school needs to function optimally and deliver excellent education? Or cut that budget by 30% and then spend a further 50% on supply staff and crisis management?
You’re right - we’re spending a vast amount of money. On the wrong things. To save money long term we need to spend a little more now - to hire the staff needed - which then allows you to not need to spend the money on crisis management.
It’s just basic adding. That you Tories no longer understand or explains an awful lot about why you got hammered and now and listing after Robert Jenrick as leader.
And it's worse than that.
When the crisis comes along, the standard response is to grab cash from the capital budget to provide revenue to get over this week's problem. Which is rational in the short term, but calamitous if you do it year after year.
Because the ways to improve productivity are either to shout at people to WORK HARDER, or spend money to provide them with tools to do their jobs better. And even the people doing the shouting now have sore throats, because there's been no investment in voice amplification equipment.
Its not just management who will reduce capital investment to pay for current costs.
Workers will happily do so as well if it means higher pay than otherwise.
Workers only ever get good pay settlements as a last resort, usually because they are essential and in short supply. Lack of investment is almost invariably the product of upper management penny pinching, so that they can pay the dividends demanded by shareholders and cream some of the profit off in higher pay and bonuses for themselves.
On three or four occasions I've had totally unexpected pay rises as management thought I was someone worth investing in.
Good management manages to keep all the plates spinning to keep workers, customers, suppliers, shareholders and government happy and to invest in the future to ensure that it continues.
A lot of management is bad in various ways and prefers to take the easiest options and to think in too short a term.
Many workers do likewise.
For example how many workers are currently trying to improve their own skillset ?
If they're not why aren't they willing to invest in themselves and why is it not a surprise that management is unwilling to do so either.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
Outrageous. All reports have to be taken seriously of course, but the prospect of maliciously false reports facing consequence does not really get my free speech defences tingling.
Creasey's beef is the fact that once investigated there is a file and a marker forever. This would be taken into account if, say for some reason Creasey had to apply for custody of her grandchildren in the event of a future family tragedy.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
The government is actually spending £1,226bn this year:
£371bn Social protection £251bn Health £131bn Education £109bn Debt interest £71bn Defence £59bn Transport £49bn Industry, agriculture & employment £47bn Public order & safety £45bn Personal social services £40bn Housing & environment £53bn Other
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
Think about this for a minute......you even put "graduate level" jobs in quotes. Should we be alright with the only way to get what are jobs that often could be done by a school leaver with A levels behind a barrier that puts someone 40k or more in debt so they can earn not much more than minimum wage?
I did think about it, which is why I used the quote marks..:
Recruiters often use graduate status as a filter irrespective of whether it is required for the job. This has serious negative consequences as you note.
That said, there are many careers where graduate status probably is required as well.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
A moment's reflection will reveal the obvious truth that no change in the law can ever prevent person X always and everywhere being able to make a false and, if they want anonymous, report about person Y. The unfortunate public servants charged with dealing with all this (police, social workers etc) have to follow multitudes of these all the time. If they neglected this and let a true one slip through resulting in, say the death of a child, the Daily Mail will be first in the long queue to attack.
BTW I remember Ted Heath once commenting on social change, and mention that he went alone to France at the age of 11. My wife at the age of 9 travelled with only another 9 year old by train from northern England to Edinburgh in about 1964. This was normal.
In retrospect that was pretty negligent with the likes of Peter Tobin and Robert Black touring the streets of Scotland.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
Kinda. I guess I'm after a word that is a little more subtle than that. Swatting is contextually specific, obviously illegal, serious and thankfully, rare(?).
I'm talking about the much more common phenomenon of people taking the other side of an argument due to a strong emotional dislike of a person they don't know IRL, due to a previous opinion they've expressed. A word that captures the absurd relativity of personal politics / contemporary cultural debate, especially online.
The "lynching" in "proxy-lynching" is too strong/severe/evocative.
Can someone can find the man that writes the dictionary?
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
Kinda. I guess I'm after a word that is a little more subtle than that. Swatting is contextually specific, obviously illegal, serious and thankfully, rare(?).
I'm talking about the much more common phenomenon of people taking the other side of an argument due to a strong emotional dislike of a person they don't know IRL, due to a previous opinion they've expressed. A word that captures the absurd relativity of personal politics / contemporary cultural debate, especially online.
The "lynching" in "proxy-lynching" is too strong/severe/evocative.
I was referring to taking an Internet argument into the real world, by falsely reporting things about a person to various third parties.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
The government is actually spending £1,226bn this year:
£371bn Social protection £251bn Health £131bn Education £109bn Debt interest £71bn Defence £59bn Transport £49bn Industry, agriculture & employment £47bn Public order & safety £45bn Personal social services £40bn Housing & environment £53bn Other
Actually £800bn isn't far off the mark. The £371bn and the £109bn are transfer payments moving money around, rather than paying for a service.
That's a fair distinction.
Perhaps government spending should be officially split between 'transfer payments' and 'public services'.
How you then split government revenue to distinguish where the deficit is would be contentious.
For example if 'transfer payments' were deemed to be fully funded each year from revenue then the deficit between 'public services' and the remaining revenue would be proportionally rather larger.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
I do indeed, I was thinking of replacing the current management with less more efficient real managers though. I would bet there are more managers and pen pushers than front line staff.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
A moment's reflection will reveal the obvious truth that no change in the law can ever prevent person X always and everywhere being able to make a false and, if they want anonymous, report about person Y. The unfortunate public servants charged with dealing with all this (police, social workers etc) have to follow multitudes of these all the time. If they neglected this and let a true one slip through resulting in, say the death of a child, the Daily Mail will be first in the long queue to attack.
BTW I remember Ted Heath once commenting on social change, and mention that he went alone to France at the age of 11. My wife at the age of 9 travelled with only another 9 year old by train from northern England to Edinburgh in about 1964. This was normal.
In retrospect that was pretty negligent with the likes of Peter Tobin and Robert Black touring the streets of Scotland.
Didn't Robert Black tour the streets of England too, in his van?
So getting the girls on the train was the thing to do.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
A moment's reflection will reveal the obvious truth that no change in the law can ever prevent person X always and everywhere being able to make a false and, if they want anonymous, report about person Y. The unfortunate public servants charged with dealing with all this (police, social workers etc) have to follow multitudes of these all the time. If they neglected this and let a true one slip through resulting in, say the death of a child, the Daily Mail will be first in the long queue to attack.
BTW I remember Ted Heath once commenting on social change, and mention that he went alone to France at the age of 11. My wife at the age of 9 travelled with only another 9 year old by train from northern England to Edinburgh in about 1964. This was normal.
In retrospect that was pretty negligent with the likes of Peter Tobin and Robert Black touring the streets of Scotland.
Point taken. But. In respect of actual risk in statistical terms, in 1964 the most dangerous thing 9 year olds did was to get in a car. In 1966 nearly 8000 people were killed on the roads, and in that period there were 300-400 homicides per year. So being driven to Edinburgh by dad was almost certainly more dangerous than travelling there by train.
That could be a European Arrest Warrant, in which case the French Authorities would have little choice.
The speculation is Durov has entered into some kind of plea bargain with French authorities. Which would be interesting.
Force him to turn Telegram into a French-controlled platform and then get the EU to ban Twitter?
Russian military and spies use, or rather did, use,* Telegram to communicate. While this may be securely encrypted from the outside world, it's not necessarily to the man owning the system.
* Even if there's no substance to the rumour of Durov spilling the beans, the fact of no longer having access to to the channel and worries about what the other side knows will be highly disruptive to the Russian operation.
Am I right in thinking that a PBer owns The Crow Road bookshop in Arundel? I would have liked to pop in when we passed on a very rainy morning yesterday nosing around the town, but it had not opened and we had to go get ready for our afternoon at Goodwood.
The rain largely cleared and my wife proved, once again, that the most successful betting strategy is go with the name you like. She won bigly on Ice Max in the 2.40 because it reminded her of a soft drink she had as a kid in Connecticut. Me, with my head in the form book, one the square root of f' all.
Am I right in thinking that a PBer owns The Crow Road bookshop in Arundel? I would have liked to pop in when we passed on a very rainy morning yesterday nosing around the town, but it had not opened and we had to go get ready for our afternoon at Goodwood.
The rain largely cleared and my wife proved, once again, that the most successful betting strategy is go with the name you like. She won bigly on Ice Max in the 2.40 because it reminded her of a soft drink she had as a kid in Connecticut. Me, with my head in the form book, one the square root of f' all.
I think it is @jamesdoyle . Apologies if I have that wrong.
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
Think about this for a minute......you even put "graduate level" jobs in quotes. Should we be alright with the only way to get what are jobs that often could be done by a school leaver with A levels behind a barrier that puts someone 40k or more in debt so they can earn not much more than minimum wage?
University exams should be made open, so anyone can pay a reasonable fee and take them. Where they get the knowledge and at what cost then becomes up to them, I suspect within a decade most would get it online at a fraction of the cost, often alongside full time work. .
Which is how many professional level qualifications have always been obtained.
Including medicine. Until around the early to mid-20th Century, most doctors did not have degrees. They'd do what amounted to an apprenticeship in medical schools and then do exams set by various professional bodies. If you look at a medical degree today, after the first year or two, it still looks suspiciously like an apprenticeship.
Mmm, there are probably a lot of jobs where a bit of post A level theoretical study and a big chunk of on the job mentoring would serve people better than three or four years of pure academic study. (I'm thinking in particular of my own field of computer programming where the academic side and the industry side don't match up very well -- a bit of theoretical grounding is helpful but you don't need three years. Indeed I did two years maths and then a year of compsci, and it's hard to say I'd have been any worse at the job if I'd skipped those two years of maths entirely...) But as a society we seem to be stuck in a situation where the degree is almost entirely acting as a "filter out 50% of applicants and be a signal that somebody can spend three years on a task without too much supervision and get it done".
You only really need a degree to be a barrister, academic, teach A Level or IB in secondary schools, be a doctor or surgeon or be a RC priest or Anglican Vicar or Bishop or a senior civil service mandarin (though the latter mainly due to Oxbridge filter). Every other professional or skilled job can be done via professional exams or apprenticeships and learning on the job and largely was 100 years ago when less than 5% went to and graduated from a university and even some PMs like Disraeli, Callaghan, Major and Churchill and Macdonald and Lloyd George often never went to university (indeed Lloyd George was a solicitor but never got a degree)
Even Jesus Christ and the late Queen never got a degree
So if your daddy is powerful it all works out?
(I do agree it's ridiculous how having a degree is deemed necessary in many instances though)
Jesus was a trained carpenter, he would be classified skilled working class by the ONS, he was a preacher and prophet and Messiah but not even a Parish priest let alone a Bishop, he just founded the Church
That's true, he did at least learn his craft long before he embarked on all that preaching business at the end.
Indeed, he had a practical job, it was the Pharisees who had all the legal knowledge and Torah and book learning
A bit misleading. People were all of: Pharisee, massively learned and had proper jobs. St Paul had exactly that background.
If Jesus's background was within one of the identifiable Jewish groups it may well have been Pharisaic. We don't know. Fairly certain is that his background was from one of strong imminent messianic expectation.
Joseph going "Mary - WTF?" might be a small argument against that.
Am I right in thinking that a PBer owns The Crow Road bookshop in Arundel? I would have liked to pop in when we passed on a very rainy morning yesterday nosing around the town, but it had not opened and we had to go get ready for our afternoon at Goodwood.
The rain largely cleared and my wife proved, once again, that the most successful betting strategy is go with the name you like. She won bigly on Ice Max in the 2.40 because it reminded her of a soft drink she had as a kid in Connecticut. Me, with my head in the form book, one the square root of f' all.
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
At least you’re still hiring junior Westerners. My $BigCorp employer seems to have given up on that and instead started grabbing Indonesians with a few years experience for less than the minimum wage.
We are ruled by people who do not like us, do not care about us, do not live in the UK and only want us as for the labour they can extract from us, and are perfectly willing to dispose of us in favour of cheaper labour.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
Environmentalist here. And vaguely socialist because inequality drives pollution.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
Kinda. I guess I'm after a word that is a little more subtle than that. Swatting is contextually specific, obviously illegal, serious and thankfully, rare(?).
I'm talking about the much more common phenomenon of people taking the other side of an argument due to a strong emotional dislike of a person they don't know IRL, due to a previous opinion they've expressed. A word that captures the absurd relativity of personal politics / contemporary cultural debate, especially online.
The "lynching" in "proxy-lynching" is too strong/severe/evocative.
I was referring to taking an Internet argument into the real world, by falsely reporting things about a person to various third parties.
Rather common, actually.
I've been on the receiving of this. Not a pleasant experience.
This is where having a HR team with reams of guidance and procedure can be useful; they simply swamped the person with paperwork, asking them to spell out exactly why this was something that would be of concern to them, what evidence they had, and also enquired of their employer as to their character and trustworthiness.
I am not sure I agree with the TSE commentary on the poll. The poll shows exactly what I would expect.
The SNP have a core base of supporters (almost tribal) but are losing support steadily amongst the masses due to continued incompetence in running Holyrood. This is their big election not Westminster and if they end up with no more seats than Labour that's not a great result.
Reform got 7% in Scotland at GE from nowhere. 9% seems about right given the result from Bathgate by-election last week. As an outlier not sure if you think that this poll is too high or too low. Reform votes not coming mainly from Tories as in England but a mix of SNP and Labour. Possibility they will push Tories for 3rd place if momentum continues and they get a good leader in Scotland.
Independence votes have not changed much for years and no big reason they will at the moment. No evidence the pro will get to the 60% + which would pressurise Westminster over a new vote.
The bit I do agree on is that the next parliament may be fun. We will get to see if a parliament requiring genuine discussion and votes works better than our one party style of governing.
On topic - check out the recent local by-election and the GE voting. Reform have an electorate in Scotland that UKIP never did and probably for the same reason as in Wales. Andrew Teale showed the second preferences of those Scottish Reform voters. Cons just about got 25% and almost half refused to transfer anywhere. 14% to Nat parties, 10% toi Greens & LDs, 9% to Lab.
I suppose the big question of the day is if Nazareth had had a university, would Jesus have graduated?
The messianic self belief and child prodigy stuff makes me believe he would have dropped out to become an entrepeneur.
The evidence is that he wasn't interested in making money.
Not really any evidence that he worked as a carpenter either, though his step dad was.
He was a child refugee though.
Could have made a fortune in the wine trade. Or mass catering.
Of course we don't know what the wine was like, and no vintagers at the time seem to have been at his door. So mass catering is clearly the better option.
"Kirstie Allsopp last night spoke of her outrage after she was quizzed by social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to go Interrailing across Europe.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.
To the 52-year-old's fury, the social worker demanded to know what 'safeguards' had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. "
I have some experience of this as my wife was a foster carer, and by default and required training so was I. The lad was 15, it's slam-dunk textbook "neglect". If it was some single mother from a sink estate the boy would now be in foster care.
Social care have more serious cases to worry about than a very-near 16 year old going interrailing, no matter how wealthy the parent is. They didn’t go alone, they had parental cash behind them & in the modern world near universal mobile phone coverage. You’d also have to ask what would be achieved by taking the child into care? Absolutely nothing - they’d clearly be worse off afterwards.
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
A moment's reflection will reveal the obvious truth that no change in the law can ever prevent person X always and everywhere being able to make a false and, if they want anonymous, report about person Y. The unfortunate public servants charged with dealing with all this (police, social workers etc) have to follow multitudes of these all the time. If they neglected this and let a true one slip through resulting in, say the death of a child, the Daily Mail will be first in the long queue to attack.
BTW I remember Ted Heath once commenting on social change, and mention that he went alone to France at the age of 11. My wife at the age of 9 travelled with only another 9 year old by train from northern England to Edinburgh in about 1964. This was normal.
Not in the same league but as 9- to 11-year-olds my friends and I would spend the summer exploring London on buses with Red Rover tickets, or going to Southend by train.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
I'd generally agree, and I get very frustrated with this in my own life.
But there is a correlation between being left-wing and being concerned about some issues, simply because the conservative instinct is that everything is roughly ok as they are at the moment and we mustn't rush in, while that on the left is that everything is a disaster and something must be done.
That's why I try and appeal to that conservative mindset when it comes to some of the issues I care about. Do you remember when you could walk to school? When there were thousands of butterflies? When the weather was a bit more predictable? When there was 8x as many cyclists as there are today? And so on.
Good news folks - apparently Mr Trump is planning a blitz of campaigning next week! How soon will he look as knackered as he did last week? Nothing odd in that - he is a 78-year-old but the optics ain't great once the wheels come off. Just ask Joe.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
Environmentalist here. And vaguely socialist because inequality drives pollution.
Which is a fine thing to believe. But one is not a prerequisite of the other, so others will take a different view.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
Isn't that the basis of why party politics works, though? You bundle together a group of ideologies and policies which aren't necessarily closely related but are hopefully at least not contradictory and whose supporters can generally tolerate each other, because that's what gets you the numbers to get into power and put into practice what you're jointly aiming for.
I don't mean to defend the more tribalist behaviour that can develop from this, of course.
I suppose the big question of the day is if Nazareth had had a university, would Jesus have graduated?
The messianic self belief and child prodigy stuff makes me believe he would have dropped out to become an entrepeneur.
The evidence is that he wasn't interested in making money.
Not really any evidence that he worked as a carpenter either, though his step dad was.
He was a child refugee though.
Mark 6.3 people say Don't listen to this guy. He is just a carpenter.
My understanding is that 'carpenter' implies a strata of society below 'peasant' - i.e. had so little in means that had to supplement income by doing odd jobs. It doesn't necessarily imply 'skilled' in the way we understand it now.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
I'd generally agree, and I get very frustrated with this in my own life.
But there is a correlation between being left-wing and being concerned about some issues, simply because the conservative instinct is that everything is roughly ok as they are at the moment and we mustn't rush in, while that on the left is that everything is a disaster and something must be done.
That's why I try and appeal to that conservative mindset when it comes to some of the issues I care about. Do you remember when you could walk to school? When there were thousands of butterflies? When the weather was a bit more predictable? When there was 8x as many cyclists as there are today? And so on.
The correlations are why political ideologies are not complete bunkum. There are connections between some strands of thought that make a lot of sense.
But an awful lot of ideas are not especially conservative or socialist or whatever. Especially social ideas.
Which is one reason, of course, that in systems like ours parties are big tent, because it's not possible or wise to insist upon a unified vision for everything.
Good news folks - apparently Mr Trump is planning a blitz of campaigning next week! How soon will he look as knackered as he did last week? Nothing odd in that - he is a 78-year-old but the optics ain't great once the wheels come off. Just ask Joe.
Why they haven't already is bizarre. He often looks more energetic than his years, but he is still very old, and makes verbal gaffes a lot, by his own attacks that should matter.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
Isn't that the basis of why party politics works, though? You bundle together a group of ideologies and policies which aren't necessarily closely related but are hopefully at least not contradictory and whose supporters can generally tolerate each other, because that's what gets you the numbers to get into power and put into practice what you're jointly aiming for.
I don't mean to defend the more tribalist behaviour that can develop from this, of course.
Yes completely right. Political parties collect together compatible views, and over time they meld those views into a narrower view. Democracies do the same thing, but on a slower and wider scale.
Edit: In my view of course. It struck me that I'd been a bit too definitive above.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Your first argument about spending money on staff. Do you think that in not spending money on staff that we’re not spending money on staff?
We are - on temps and emergency cover. You can’t just cut teacher numbers and keep operating the school. Or medical staff in hospitals. Or courts.
This is the Tory problem. “Just work harder”. You can’t work the remaining people hard enough to cope with the staff already cut. It’s impossible and they break. So you need even more emergency spending to deal with the damage.
Are you comprehending yet? There is not a “spend no money” option.
Our government is not spending nothing and neither did the last government. It is spending nearly £800bn a year, more than £2bn a day. The argument that we just need to spend more to get value for money has been tested to oblivion, not least under Boris and Sunak. It hasn't worked. It never works.
What is better value for money? Employ the number of teachers the school needs to function optimally and deliver excellent education? Or cut that budget by 30% and then spend a further 50% on supply staff and crisis management?
You’re right - we’re spending a vast amount of money. On the wrong things. To save money long term we need to spend a little more now - to hire the staff needed - which then allows you to not need to spend the money on crisis management.
It’s just basic adding. That you Tories no longer understand or explains an awful lot about why you got hammered and now and listing after Robert Jenrick as leader.
Education and health are devolved.
Are you suggesting that SNP Scotland and Labour Wales also managed to spend at this optimally inefficient level as well as Conservative England ?
The UK has had an effectively 14 year experiment of different parties running public services in its different parts.
Are there any significant differences in the quality and quantity of output of those services ?
Not independent experiments. Conservative "England" dictated the overall funding, as well as the wider market conditions, and much of the machinery - for instance, immigration, most taxes, and so on.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
Isn't that the basis of why party politics works, though? You bundle together a group of ideologies and policies which aren't necessarily closely related but are hopefully at least not contradictory and whose supporters can generally tolerate each other, because that's what gets you the numbers to get into power and put into practice what you're jointly aiming for.
I don't mean to defend the more tribalist behaviour that can develop from this, of course.
The difference is parties bundle together groups of ideas into something at least semi coherent. In a system like ours which is 2 party (or 2.5 party) it becomes a very loose ideology indeed, but a common thread of liberal or socialist or conservative ideals can be attempted, though most practical ideas are not very ideological so fit anyone.
Whereas what people increasingly attempt is to go well beyond attempting a coherent ideology, but just declare support for what might be outright contradictory ideals as if they self evidently belong together in an ideological sense.
Now, if something is not a particularly ideological proposal, there's no harm to your coherence to adding it to your platform, unless you are claim that it is ideological.
So to take a hypothetical, if someone wants to say they are a nationalist and also support some left wing economic idea, there's no issue there. But if they declare being a nationalist naturally means you should be left wing in economics, that's garbage, even if it were the case that predominantly supporters fell in that category.
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
At least you’re still hiring junior Westerners. My $BigCorp employer seems to have given up on that and instead started grabbing Indonesians with a few years experience for less than the minimum wage.
We are ruled by people who do not like us, do not care about us, do not live in the UK and only want us as for the labour they can extract from us, and are perfectly willing to dispose of us in favour of cheaper labour.
But other than that you are optimistic for the future?
I am not sure I agree with the TSE commentary on the poll. The poll shows exactly what I would expect.
The SNP have a core base of supporters (almost tribal) but are losing support steadily amongst the masses due to continued incompetence in running Holyrood. This is their big election not Westminster and if they end up with no more seats than Labour that's not a great result.
Reform got 7% in Scotland at GE from nowhere. 9% seems about right given the result from Bathgate by-election last week. As an outlier not sure if you think that this poll is too high or too low. Reform votes not coming mainly from Tories as in England but a mix of SNP and Labour. Possibility they will push Tories for 3rd place if momentum continues and they get a good leader in Scotland.
Independence votes have not changed much for years and no big reason they will at the moment. No evidence the pro will get to the 60% + which would pressurise Westminster over a new vote.
The bit I do agree on is that the next parliament may be fun. We will get to see if a parliament requiring genuine discussion and votes works better than our one party style of governing.
Never has been a one party style of governing in Scotland, the Salmond breakthrough administration aside. Everyone on PB seems to regard the SNP as an absolute one party in control government, like most Westminster administrations. But it's a minority government.
Can't do what? Make the odd witty comment at PMQs that the small percentage who really pay attention to politics might appreciate? Devise policies that will never be implemented? Watch helplessly as an overwhelming majority means that the government can do whatever it likes however irrational or self harming and all your work and smart comments are to no avail?
Worrying about who the next Tory leader is shows that you haven't come to terms with what happened last month. They are irrelevant and will be for 10 years now. That is the price of complete failure.
Nonsense. Snap out of it man, and grow up.
You're facing a socialist government, and it's time to rally around and challenge it.
Good grief Casino, how old are you?
This is nothing like a socialist government. The only time this country has got close to a socialist government was 1945-1950 and even that was fairly mild.
Starmer's is likely to be very much like Blair2, possibly a bit better, possibly not. But in any event, it will be a shedload better than the mismanagement we have had for the past 14 years.
At the moment Starmer's government is far more like Brown2 than Blair2
Starmer is a disaster.
That comment may become true, but to state it as fact five weeks after the election is just ridiculous.
There's plenty of evidence already that he's an absolute disaster.
Wait until they do over the pensions in the Autumn Budget...
And that will bite hard on not just current pensioners.
When they repeatedly said they specifically won't raise the rate of income tax, NI or VAT it was clear to anyone who can actually listen that they were going to increase other taxes. Some reform is long overdue in pensions, lets see what they do.
Personally I find it ludicrous that the government foregoes tax to allow people to build up multi million pound retirement pots, plus £20k per year ISAs. Subsidising savings up to around 500k per person makes a lot of sense, but beyond that it is just giving back tax to the wealthy and hiding that we are doing it by making the system very complex.
The 'pension reform' you crave will apply to people currently in work, who will not be able to save as efficiently as existing retirees were encouraged to. They will be the losers. I genuinely want the Zedders to enjoy the same benefits as me but they seem determined to throw them away in an envious fit of pique.
Give over.
Our generation has had the rug pulled away every step of the way. Free university got replaced with tuition fees as it was supposedly "unaffordable" to continue with free university with so many more going than in the past.
Well there's so many more pensioners than in the past so in the exact same way it is completely unaffordable to keep paying triple locked pensions.
Getting pensions on an affordable footing is better to ensuring they're still there in the future than burning down the house now by pissing away every penny available then finding there's no money left.
Empty rhetoric.
Not remotely empty.
Give me one good reason that free tuition was taken away because there were more people and it was no longer affordable that doesn't equally apply to pensioners benefits.
There's no money left, getting spending on a sustainable footing is the best way to ensure the spending can be available in the future too.
Because impoverished pensioners will require additional other services.
Government should actually look at what it does in a critical light and determine if it is value added. For example it’s not clear to me that all the current students benefit from their university courses and not clear that society benefits from funding them.
But we have this mindset that more people having tertiary education is a good thing in and of itself . That’s just not true. More people having -*value added* tertiary education is a good thing
I told my son uni was a bad idea when he asked...he went...he got an msc and then said he never wants to work in a lab ever again and says he wished he had taken my advice and learned a trade....I didn't advise him out of snobbery....just knew he would be happier using his hands and make a lot more money that he would with his degree
I’m not sure that either of you are quite right.
Unfortunately many employers use tertiary education as a screening device for “graduate level” jobs (even though the jobs may not require graduate skills). So having an MSc gives your son options that he didn’t have before even if he doesn’t want to work in a lab.
But equally there are people who are not suited for an academic path - for whom a trade would be better. There is certainly useful training that can be done - improving the NVQ model perhaps - but not necessarily 3 years and £40k of student debt…
Having had 65+ MSc's apply for a junior PHP developer role this week - none of whom I could distinguish from another - they might as well have spent 1/4 the money getting through an undistinguished bootcamp programme.
If anything, I'm giving a +1 to people who paid their way through a bootcamp to get out of whatever hellhole job they were in before.
At least you’re still hiring junior Westerners. My $BigCorp employer seems to have given up on that and instead started grabbing Indonesians with a few years experience for less than the minimum wage.
We are ruled by people who do not like us, do not care about us, do not live in the UK and only want us as for the labour they can extract from us, and are perfectly willing to dispose of us in favour of cheaper labour.
But other than that you are optimistic for the future?
I'm like the painter Francis Bacon, optimistic about nothing in particular.
Maybe by Westminster standards, but exactly the same applies to the number of *Tory* MSPs who were present at the samer time as there were much fewer Tory MPs pro rata.
Don't forget the voting system is *very* different from Westminster. It was designed to penalise the leading party and give extra votes to the trailing parties scraped up from across large areas in the list system.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
Environmentalist here. And vaguely socialist because inequality drives pollution.
Which is a fine thing to believe. But one is not a prerequisite of the other, so others will take a different view.
Inequality brings dissatisfaction on a personal level.
More unequal societies have higher levels of personal indebtedness in the lower quartile/s.
That extra spend is rarely placed with the local farm shop. In fact the spending tends towards keeping up with the Jones’s
(polluting consumer goods++)
There are numbers/ reports, I think I can back up this claim. Though I’d prefer not too as I can’t remember where I found the explicit linkage.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
Environmentalist here. And vaguely socialist because inequality drives pollution.
Which is a fine thing to believe. But one is not a prerequisite of the other, so others will take a different view.
Inequality brings dissatisfaction on a personal level.
More unequal societies have higher levels of personal indebtedness in the lower quartile/s.
That extra spend is rarely placed with the local farm shop. In fact the spending tends towards keeping up with the Jones’s
(polluting consumer goods++)
There are numbers/ reports, I think I can back up this claim. Though I’d prefer not too as I can’t remember where I found the explicit linkage.
I'm not arguing with the idea, so you don't need to prove it to anyone. I'm simply saying people can get to the same conclusions through different analyses.
Per my comment last night, I am far from convinced that people want Starmer to be telling them everything is terrible. They can see the state the country is in. They need a bit of reassurance that Labour will put it on the right trajectory.
Even at the very nadir of Thatcher’s popularity in the 1979-1983 parliament, she was always very careful to sell the ‘why’ and to talk about what she saw as the good times ahead.
The doom and gloom from Labour is not the “national renewal” message they campaigned on. They did not fight an election, as the Tories did in 2010, to get a mandate for unpopular (even if necessary) tax and spend decisions. They said very little, and got a huge majority out of it but now the chips are down I still think they will regret not saying enough of this at the time of the campaign.
It suited both of the major parties to ignore or hide the hideous state the government's finances were in. The Tories wanted to claim that they had done well and the future looked bright and Labour wanted to pretend that there was enough money to improve the state of public services if you let them at it.
The reality is that for every £7 the government spends one is borrowed from our children. If this money was going into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads and other capital investments that they would get the benefit of that might be excusable but it is in fact going to paying current expenditure in the main because we think we are entitled to a higher standard of living as a country than we actually earn.
Rebalancing the public finances now is going to be very nearly as challenging as it was in 2010 but, as others have pointed out, we have been sold a somewhat different fantasy.
I wouldn't want to be a Labour minister. The mess is almost impossible to navigate. I do have to point out though that the cost of not spending money is usually higher than the cost of doing it properly. As an example - school budgets get cut so staff levels get cut which gives no flex when members of staff are ill which increases the costs and frequency of emergency spending to cover holes with supply teachers. Same in the NHS. Same in council services. Etc. Etc.
As a nation - and I do squarely blame the Conservative Party for this - we now see all spending as "cost" and not "benefit". "Who will pay" instead of who will benefit. And zero care for the cost of not spending - as if it is a zero sum decision.
You say that we're borrowing a pound from our children. But what are we leaving our children? Towns in ruin, public services and infrastructure gone, a desperate lack of hope as grinding crushing poverty reduces millions to a life of just about managing. We need to refloat our economy so that towns can actually be viable again, letting businesses flourish and having customers for those businesses actually having spare cash to pay for their goods or services. If everyone is broke we all lose.
What happened to the Tories? We need the return of capitalism and enterprise, and you lot keep wanting to cut to zero.
You don't buy the ubiquitous PB narrative that in just 7 weeks Labour have squandered the golden legacy they inherited?
We need to spend money to save money. We're spending so much dealing with the crises created by cuts, and it is all money wasted. We need more front line staff in front line roles in health, education and council services. That means spending money now to save money later.
Again, lets do capitalism. I have a food shop with old-fashioned open chillers. A fortune in cash literally evaporating off into the air. I could save an awful lot of money on energy bills by investing in new closed door chillers.
"Who would pay for that, how much debt are we in" say the Tories of 2024. But go back 20 years and the Tories of 2004 would be "yes, absolutely. Borrow. Invest. Gain a Return on that Investment". Capitalism.
It is the exact same thing with the country. Borrowing to give people free cash? No. Borrowing to invest to significantly cut operating expenses and expand the economy? Absolutely.
Seriously, today's remaining Tories need their heads examining.
Ian, spending money on more staff is not an investment, it is an increase in costs. That increase in cost may be justified if it produces a better service but the evidence for that in the public sector is thin indeed. What seems to happen is that already poor productivity falls further.
I have no problem with borrowing to genuinely invest, provided that you can be confident that investment is going to produce a return in the future. So, in your neck of the woods, dualling the A96 would be an investment. It would encourage businesses who could be confident of getting their goods to market. It would save lives and it would stop people wasting their potentially productive time in one queue after another.
I think we need a lot more investment but I am not so sure we can afford to borrow a lot more to pay for it. That is why I think the government should be looking to cut current expenditure and unnecessary benefits for the well off to create the space and cash for that investment. But what did Reeves do? The first thing she did was to cancel a series of investments with growth potential so she could increase public pay.
As I have said before I do not envy her her task. Growth, inflation, employment were all good to very good when she took over but our public expenditure is at least £100bn out of line with our income. Its a very difficult challenge.
Far too much ballast in the public sector , inefficient money pit. They need to get some real managers in and get productivity up. Any penny of a pay rise should be linked to productivity and have to pay for itself.
Thing is, Malc, you're basically right, but do what you say and you'll be back, next election cycle (or sooner?) with;
"Get rid of all these stupid managers sitting on their arses, we need to fire them all and employ x number of new nurses (or insert front-line public sector role, according to context)."
See the problem?
Malcolm is something of an enigma. He is a natural Tebbitt Tory who also happens to be a Scottish Nationalist, and his political hero is a former firebrand Trot. Make of that what you will.
Unique Pete, right wing but with a heart but a scourge on slackers and wasters.
One of the silliest things that happens in politics is people trying to bring together ideologies or policies which have nothing to do with one another and treat them as if they are necessary for one another. As though someone who is an environmentalist must also be socialist or must support Palestine, or someone who supports increasing defence spending must also support health privitisation or attacking 'woke' policies, whatever those might be.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
Environmentalist here. And vaguely socialist because inequality drives pollution.
Which is a fine thing to believe. But one is not a prerequisite of the other, so others will take a different view.
Inequality brings dissatisfaction on a personal level.
More unequal societies have higher levels of personal indebtedness in the lower quartile/s.
That extra spend is rarely placed with the local farm shop. In fact the spending tends towards keeping up with the Jones’s
(polluting consumer goods++)
There are numbers/ reports, I think I can back up this claim. Though I’d prefer not too as I can’t remember where I found the explicit linkage.
"Inequality brings dissatisfaction on a personal level. "
I've tried to draft my thoughts on this a couple of times. I'm not sure I'll get it right now.
Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality. At some points in history there have been awful differences in the way people are treated, and today there are people that are starved of the resources that would be theirs in an equal system.
Inequality is though perhaps the primary theme of the human race. It won't go away.
Comments
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The internet (indeed, people in general) is/are a terrible judge of the variables that actually matter.
I don't think there's any other site in the world where I could read "Even Jesus Christ....... never got a degree".
And letting your son go on holiday with his mate. Utter nonsense. Some 15yr olds I wouldnt let go to the shops on their own and some would have no issues sailing around the world.
There are many on here who would be quite happy for all 15yr olds + 1 day to have the vote.
Both only work in certain circumstances, and at the margins when you have tilted the balance away, not as a matter of normal policy.
https://x.com/CalltoActivism/status/1827394931209502940
(It wouldn’t surprise me if a fair number of the “reports” sent into social services originate with TERFs who have never forgiven Kirsty Allsopp for taking the opposing side btw.)
How would a non-university educated skilled tradesman of religious character in his 30s have voted in 2024?
If something very serious had happened to the boy on holiday abroad with another minor I suspect the matter would be taken seriously after the event. Any other children in the care of the mother would be reviewed and a police and social services investigation launched into the boy's safety. You are making a sweeping assumption that a child living in a comfortable home must be safe. That is social services 's job to identify. National treasures are not exempt from scrutiny.
FFS surely not
Which part of this do you not understand?
There are a new set of knife regulations coming in in September. TBH they are more coherent than previous versions, but may impact knives that may have been regarded as tools,or collectors items. Since even possession is being outlawed on these, police will not be lenient if they find something incidentally.
Things that are being banned:
- Knives with more than one point - aimed at Zombie or fantasy knives.
- Knives with a blade over 8" long, with a serrated section more than 2" long, as for example on the reverse edge of knives inspired by the Rambo films. (One answer: grind it to be a normal edge, or hand it in.)
- Knives with more than one hole through the blade.
More information:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/compensation-scheme-for-zombie-knives-and-machetes
(Go down to the compensation scheme link and there are pictures.)
A good video from The Gear Guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqU4pEWmM2Y
I propose "proxy-lynching"
Or do contracts and laws not apply in Melbourne and Sydney ?
Likewise the NHS should be willing to deduct money from Indian doctors and Nigerian nurses if they owe that from training in their home countries.
https://news.sky.com/story/stella-creasy-mp-who-faced-malicious-report-to-social-services-claiming-she-was-not-a-fit-mother-calls-for-law-change-13023140
If Jesus's background was within one of the identifiable Jewish groups it may well have been Pharisaic. We don't know. Fairly certain is that his background was from one of strong imminent messianic expectation.
https://x.com/CalltoActivism/status/1827428255923642812
But how often does that happen ?
Obviously supply teachers have a role in emergency situations or when there isn't demand for a regular teacher at an individual school.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/special-counsel-jack-smith-was-targeted-attempted-swatting-christmas-d-rcna132964
Is it?
The government mandates certain staffing levels: If the government then deliberately under staffs the service, forcing the service managers to employ contract staff to deliver the mandated staffing, this will cost more overall than just employing the required number of staff in the first place (contract staff need extra management & almost always cost more per hour to employ). The exception is where you can get away with paying your contract staff much less than your permanent staff - but this doesn’t seem to be the case in education or health care.
If you want to argue that the government should reduce staffing levels, have at it. But that’s a separate argument.
BTW I remember Ted Heath once commenting on social change, and mention that he went alone to France at the age of 11. My wife at the age of 9 travelled with only another 9 year old by train from northern England to Edinburgh in about 1964. This was normal.
Good management manages to keep all the plates spinning to keep workers, customers, suppliers, shareholders and government happy and to invest in the future to ensure that it continues.
A lot of management is bad in various ways and prefers to take the easiest options and to think in too short a term.
Many workers do likewise.
For example how many workers are currently trying to improve their own skillset ?
If they're not why aren't they willing to invest in themselves and why is it not a surprise that management is unwilling to do so either.
The £371bn and the £109bn are transfer payments moving money around, rather than paying for a service.
Recruiters often use graduate status as a filter irrespective of whether it is required for the job. This has serious negative consequences as you note.
That said, there are many careers where graduate status probably is required as well.
I'm talking about the much more common phenomenon of people taking the other side of an argument due to a strong emotional dislike of a person they don't know IRL, due to a previous opinion they've expressed. A word that captures the absurd relativity of personal politics / contemporary cultural debate, especially online.
The "lynching" in "proxy-lynching" is too strong/severe/evocative.
Can someone can find the man that writes the dictionary?
I've got a job for him.
Rather common, actually.
Perhaps government spending should be officially split between 'transfer payments' and 'public services'.
How you then split government revenue to distinguish where the deficit is would be contentious.
For example if 'transfer payments' were deemed to be fully funded each year from revenue then the deficit between 'public services' and the remaining revenue would be proportionally rather larger.
When in truth there's a spectrum, and whilst some ideas will align more than others, normal people don't feel the need to align all their views together in some absurd unified theory.
It seems pretty straightforward that someone aould be a nationalist and entirely separately be left or right wing on economic or social matters.
So getting the girls on the train was the thing to do.
Second world war veteran Manette Baillie marks birthday with skydive for charity in Suffolk"
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/25/manette-baillie-britain-oldest-skydiver-suffolk
* Even if there's no substance to the rumour of Durov spilling the beans, the fact of no longer having access to to the channel and worries about what the other side knows will be highly disruptive to the Russian operation.
The rain largely cleared and my wife proved, once again, that the most successful betting strategy is go with the name you like. She won bigly on Ice Max in the 2.40 because it reminded her of a soft drink she had as a kid in Connecticut. Me, with my head in the form book, one the square root of f' all.
One hour on Himars Bouncy Castles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPqYvn5NOEs
Not really any evidence that he worked as a carpenter either, though his step dad was.
He was a child refugee though.
Would probably have been in the cabinet, then.
Though reading the Sermon on the Mount, it’s unlikely to have been a Tory one.
Or mass catering.
But he didn't.
Trump claims Fox News called him to interview after Harris DNC speech: ‘I’m the Ratings Machine’
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4846466-donald-trump-fox-news-kamala-harris-dnc-speech/
And vaguely socialist because inequality drives pollution.
This is where having a HR team with reams of guidance and procedure can be useful; they simply swamped the person with paperwork, asking them to spell out exactly why this was something that would be of concern to them, what evidence they had, and also enquired of their employer as to their character and trustworthiness.
The SNP have a core base of supporters (almost tribal) but are losing support steadily amongst the masses due to continued incompetence in running Holyrood. This is their big election not Westminster and if they end up with no more seats than Labour that's not a great result.
Reform got 7% in Scotland at GE from nowhere. 9% seems about right given the result from Bathgate by-election last week. As an outlier not sure if you think that this poll is too high or too low. Reform votes not coming mainly from Tories as in England but a mix of SNP and Labour. Possibility they will push Tories for 3rd place if momentum continues and they get a good leader in Scotland.
Independence votes have not changed much for years and no big reason they will at the moment. No evidence the pro will get to the 60% + which would pressurise Westminster over a new vote.
The bit I do agree on is that the next parliament may be fun. We will get to see if a parliament requiring genuine discussion and votes works better than our one party style of governing.
But there is a correlation between being left-wing and being concerned about some issues, simply because the conservative instinct is that everything is roughly ok as they are at the moment and we mustn't rush in, while that on the left is that everything is a disaster and something must be done.
That's why I try and appeal to that conservative mindset when it comes to some of the issues I care about. Do you remember when you could walk to school? When there were thousands of butterflies? When the weather was a bit more predictable? When there was 8x as many cyclists as there are today? And so on.
There was a book by various MPs on Christianity and politics iirc. According to the reviews, Jesus was a Liberal Conservative with Socialist leanings.
I don't mean to defend the more tribalist behaviour that can develop from this, of course.
But an awful lot of ideas are not especially conservative or socialist or whatever. Especially social ideas.
Which is one reason, of course, that in systems like ours parties are big tent, because it's not possible or wise to insist upon a unified vision for everything.
Edit: In my view of course. It struck me that I'd been a bit too definitive above.
Whereas what people increasingly attempt is to go well beyond attempting a coherent ideology, but just declare support for what might be outright contradictory ideals as if they self evidently belong together in an ideological sense.
Now, if something is not a particularly ideological proposal, there's no harm to your coherence to adding it to your platform, unless you are claim that it is ideological.
So to take a hypothetical, if someone wants to say they are a nationalist and also support some left wing economic idea, there's no issue there. But if they declare being a nationalist naturally means you should be left wing in economics, that's garbage, even if it were the case that predominantly supporters fell in that category.
31 mins, 48 secs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Le9zFw-uc
Don't forget the voting system is *very* different from Westminster. It was designed to penalise the leading party and give extra votes to the trailing parties scraped up from across large areas in the list system.
More unequal societies have higher levels of personal indebtedness in the lower quartile/s.
That extra spend is rarely placed with the local farm shop. In fact the spending tends towards keeping up with the Jones’s
(polluting consumer goods++)
There are numbers/ reports, I think I can back up this claim. Though I’d prefer not too as I can’t remember where I found the explicit linkage.
Back Harris @ 2.02, or lay Trump @ 2.08?
I wimped out and just did both, but I wonder if anyone has any thoughts?
(Obviously the choice is mainly about could Trump blow up?)
I just got a free bet from BF and used it to lay Trump if that helps.
I've tried to draft my thoughts on this a couple of times. I'm not sure I'll get it right now.
Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality. At some points in history there have been awful differences in the way people are treated, and today there are people that are starved of the resources that would be theirs in an equal system.
Inequality is though perhaps the primary theme of the human race. It won't go away.