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.
Apparently he is suddenly quite concerned the famously litigious Taylor Swift is about to unleash her lawyers for the fake posts
I should have noticed this sooner, but someone pointed out earlier that the reason he is so obsessed with her is he fancies her.
If you were going to have one of these two bets, which would it be?
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?)
Today I've put a few more hundred on Harris. If Trump wins I'm stuffed ,,, but then again, we all are.
My own betting strategy is the exact opposite. I bet on Trump so that I can at least have the consolation of winning a few dollars (and impoverishing a friend) if he gets back in.
It will at least buy me enough alcohol to spend the last few hours of Western civilisation with a pleasant buzz ...
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.
How about not allowing people to leave the country with an unpaid debt to the government....simple but effective....
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.
How about not allowing people to leave the country with an unpaid debt to the government....simple but effective....
The small boat proprietors could get money both ways!
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.
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.
How about not allowing people to leave the country with an unpaid debt to the government....simple but effective....
How will you distinguish between someone going on holiday and someone emigrating?
After Biden’s car crash debate in June and the assassination attempt on Trump on July, Trump was pulling away with a healthy lead in nearly all the battleground states. Now, even before the impact of the DNC in Chicago, every battleground state is very close and well within polling margins of error.
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.
How about not allowing people to leave the country with an unpaid debt to the government....simple but effective....
How will you distinguish between someone going on holiday and someone emigrating?
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
After Biden’s car crash debate in June and the assassination attempt on Trump on July, Trump was pulling away with a healthy lead in nearly all the battleground states. Now, even before the impact of the DNC in Chicago, every battleground state is very close and well within polling margins of error.
To paraphrase Basil Fawlty...
"Next contestant Andrew Neil from Paisley Grasse, specialist subject the bleeding obvious".
"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.
At the age of 15 I set off with a 16 year-old-friend on a three-week hitch-hiking and camping holiday. In those innocent times it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do. One day I hitched alone from Lyndhurst to Bath and back: 60 miles each way. It was the Saturday of the 1966 World Cup quarter finals, some of which I watched in a TV shop window. Portugal beat North Korea 5-3 after the latter took a 3-0 lead. Argentina made a bit of a stink when their captain was sent off against England at Wembley. But the high-point of the trip (for me) was waking one morning to the news that Gwynfor Evans had won the Carmarthen by-election to become the first Plaid Cymru MP.
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven.
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.
This is a fair comment as the Greens have had some impact on SNP but only at edges. The day to day reality is that the SNP controls Scotland with an iron fist. They have also centralised control taking power away from the councils. I live in Glasgow but don't know the Lord Provost (Mayor) name because she has no power unlike Khan or Burnham.
Reform is an unknown entity in Scotland but open to be used by a number of protest groups to influence power. The next big election in the UK is the Scottish vote and I would suggest the result is presently wide open. Reform may get no MSPs but it may also get more than 10.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
I do that quite a lot. Though it does tend also (not always) to indicate agreement.
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.
This is a fair comment as the Greens have had some impact on SNP but only at edges. The day to day reality is that the SNP controls Scotland with an iron fist. They have also centralised control taking power away from the councils. I live in Glasgow but don't know the Lord Provost (Mayor) name because she has no power unlike Khan or Burnham.
Reform is an unknown entity in Scotland but open to be used by a number of protest groups to influence power. The next big election in the UK is the Scottish vote and I would suggest the result is presently wide open. Reform may get no MSPs but it may also get more than 10.
Apart from nutjob unionists they will get nowhere at Holyrood.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
I hit Like for thoughtful posts like yours, whether I agree with them or not. I Like even more when people have taken the trouble to engage with something I have written. It's a way of saying, Thanks. I Like when people post something I might have written, to avoid the dreadful +1. Finally I Like when someone shares joyful or sad news, as part of PB's common soul, despite our differences in politics and life experiences.
… Earlier this month, Harris held the second rally of her presidential campaign in Atlanta, an event that featured Megan Thee Stallion; the campaign said it attracted more than 10,000 people.
It then launched a mobilization effort in the state and now touts more than 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers and 24 coordinated campaign offices sprawled across Georgia. The campaign refers to its ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”
The Harris-Walz campaign said it has recruited nearly 400,000 new volunteers nationally since Harris launched her presidential bid last month. The campaign refers to its ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”..
Trump confirms that he is in favour of childhood measles, tetanus, polio, and other infectious diseases.
Reminder that for months Trump has told his rallies he will not give “one penny” to any school w/a vaccine mandate-from kindergarten thru college. Providing RFK Jr prominent role in public health empowers an advocate for undermining state vaccine requirements. https://x.com/RonBrownstein/status/1827704053754982849
… Earlier this month, Harris held the second rally of her presidential campaign in Atlanta, an event that featured Megan Thee Stallion; the campaign said it attracted more than 10,000 people.
It then launched a mobilization effort in the state and now touts more than 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers and 24 coordinated campaign offices sprawled across Georgia. The campaign refers to its ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”
The Harris-Walz campaign said it has recruited nearly 400,000 new volunteers nationally since Harris launched her presidential bid last month. The campaign refers to its ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”..
Even if they think it a long shot, forcing Trump to divert limited resources there and away from Arizona and Pennsylvania counts as a win. Expect to see them in Florida and Texas too, possibly Missouri.
Trump confirms that he is in favour of childhood measles, tetanus, polio, and other infectious diseases.
Reminder that for months Trump has told his rallies he will not give “one penny” to any school w/a vaccine mandate-from kindergarten thru college. Providing RFK Jr prominent role in public health empowers an advocate for undermining state vaccine requirements. https://x.com/RonBrownstein/status/1827704053754982849
Harmful and previously thought to be eradicated, Donald Trump was the 45th President of the United States.
Trump confirms that he is in favour of childhood measles, tetanus, polio, and other infectious diseases.
Reminder that for months Trump has told his rallies he will not give “one penny” to any school w/a vaccine mandate-from kindergarten thru college. Providing RFK Jr prominent role in public health empowers an advocate for undermining state vaccine requirements. https://x.com/RonBrownstein/status/1827704053754982849
A reply makes a pertinent point:
Important context: Every state requires vaccines to attend school. Trump’s pledge would defund all schools.
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.
How about not allowing people to leave the country with an unpaid debt to the government....simple but effective....
I was watching an episode of an old-ish TV show recently ("Hadleigh" if you must ask : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadleigh_(TV_series) ) and the episode was centred around whether the main character had taken too much currency out of the UK when they left for a trip to Spain.
I am too young (hurrah! at last!) or too poor (un-hurrah!) to have known that was really 'a thing'.
… Earlier this month, Harris held the second rally of her presidential campaign in Atlanta, an event that featured Megan Thee Stallion; the campaign said it attracted more than 10,000 people.
It then launched a mobilization effort in the state and now touts more than 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers and 24 coordinated campaign offices sprawled across Georgia. The campaign refers to its ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”
The Harris-Walz campaign said it has recruited nearly 400,000 new volunteers nationally since Harris launched her presidential bid last month. The campaign refers to its ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”..
Even if they think it a long shot, forcing Trump to divert limited resources there and away from Arizona and Pennsylvania counts as a win. Expect to see them in Florida and Texas too, possibly Missouri.
Reading the story, it sounds more as though they’re considering a serious play for the state.
The campaign has a lot of resources - they raised $500m last month - but they one thing they don’t have to spare is time.
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.
How about not allowing people to leave the country with an unpaid debt to the government....simple but effective....
I was watching an episode of an old-ish TV show recently ("Hadleigh" if you must ask : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadleigh_(TV_series) ) and the episode was centred around whether the main character had taken too much currency out of the UK when they left for a trip to Spain.
I am too young (hurrah! at last!) or too poor (un-hurrah!) to have known that was really 'a thing'.
"...Labour has no plans for a wealth tax it has been revealed, despite Britain's biggest trade union Unite calling on the new government to implement one..."
"...Labour has no plans for a wealth tax it has been revealed, despite Britain's biggest trade union Unite calling on the new government to implement one..."
I think the growing narrative is of Labour being rather cowardly. The Ming vase strategy might be OK for the campaign, but to govern is to choose, and so far the Labour government is choosing to be rather wishy washy on quite a few issues.
RFK Jr’s daughter, Kick Kennedy, recounts the time her dad cut off a dead whale’s head with a chainsaw. When he said he had skeletons in his closet, he was not kidding. https://x.com/CyberPunkCortes/status/1827549288588624060
"...Labour has no plans for a wealth tax it has been revealed, despite Britain's biggest trade union Unite calling on the new government to implement one..."
I think the growing narrative is of Labour being rather cowardly. The Ming vase strategy might be OK for the campaign, but to govern is to choose, and so far the Labour government is choosing to be rather wishy washy on quite a few issues.
It doesn't HAVE to do what the unions tell it. Most of the time it is advisable that it doesn't.
"...Labour has no plans for a wealth tax it has been revealed, despite Britain's biggest trade union Unite calling on the new government to implement one..."
I think the growing narrative is of Labour being rather cowardly. The Ming vase strategy might be OK for the campaign, but to govern is to choose, and so far the Labour government is choosing to be rather wishy washy on quite a few issues.
And yet their unexpectedly bold choice on WFA got absolutely monstered.
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.
This is a fair comment as the Greens have had some impact on SNP but only at edges. The day to day reality is that the SNP controls Scotland with an iron fist. They have also centralised control taking power away from the councils. I live in Glasgow but don't know the Lord Provost (Mayor) name because she has no power unlike Khan or Burnham.
Reform is an unknown entity in Scotland but open to be used by a number of protest groups to influence power. The next big election in the UK is the Scottish vote and I would suggest the result is presently wide open. Reform may get no MSPs but it may also get more than 10.
Apart from nutjob unionists they will get nowhere at Holyrood.
I forsee a Lab, Lib, Green Scottish Government in 2026. The reaction from Labour when they find their ability to govern destroyed by the parasite Greens will be wonderful to behold.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
Cameron Thomas MP seems to have quite an interesting and impressive CV for a new MP
"...Labour has no plans for a wealth tax it has been revealed, despite Britain's biggest trade union Unite calling on the new government to implement one..."
I think the growing narrative is of Labour being rather cowardly. The Ming vase strategy might be OK for the campaign, but to govern is to choose, and so far the Labour government is choosing to be rather wishy washy on quite a few issues.
It doesn't HAVE to do what the unions tell it. Most of the time it is advisable that it doesn't.
You have to tax *something*. Even a nightwatchman state needs tax. The current approach is to tax the pre-retirement poor, because the rich go live in other countries and the retired have the votes. It isn't working, and we have the advent of Reform to prove 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.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
Thanks.
Decent logic, displaying an impressive understanding of the local psephology. Why would I like to know? I have you down as a sensible political bellwether. I think I remember you once posting you'd be the most left wing member of the Tory Party and/or the most right wing Labour Party member. That was a few years ago, though. I think Cameron/May era. I guess I was wondering how, after all the turmoil, you now fitted in to the current political context.
"In North Carolina, the first state to begin early voting, his name has already been physically printed on the ballots in around 30 counties, so he’s probably stuck there, too."
Trump confirms that he is in favour of childhood measles, tetanus, polio, and other infectious diseases.
Reminder that for months Trump has told his rallies he will not give “one penny” to any school w/a vaccine mandate-from kindergarten thru college. Providing RFK Jr prominent role in public health empowers an advocate for undermining state vaccine requirements. https://x.com/RonBrownstein/status/1827704053754982849
A reply makes a pertinent point:
Important context: Every state requires vaccines to attend school. Trump’s pledge would defund all schools.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
Cameron Thomas MP seems to have quite an interesting and impressive CV for a new MP
Yes, not many professional NBA players in the Lib Dems.
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.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
Thanks.
Decent logic, displaying an impressive understanding of the local psephology. Why would I like to know? I have you down as a sensible political bellwether. I think I remember you once posting you'd be the most left wing member of the Tory Party and/or the most right wing Labour Party member. That was a few years ago, though. I think Cameron/May era. I guess I was wondering how, after all the turmoil, you now fitted in to the current political context.
I appreciate your post.
Thank you Tim. Much appreciated. I don't remember writing that but certainly could have done.
I quite liked Cameron, and could live with May. On economics I'm quite right wing but am socially liberal. My Dad was a One Nation Tory and I would probably have been the same if that had been an option. He distanced himself from the Tories during the Thatcher years and I edged leftwards about the same time,
These days I'm happy enough with grown up government, so you can imagine what I thought of Johnson and Truss. It will probably be a long time before I weary of Starmer, but you never know! I may get there one day, if the Lord spares me long enough.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
Thanks.
Decent logic, displaying an impressive understanding of the local psephology. Why would I like to know? I have you down as a sensible political bellwether. I think I remember you once posting you'd be the most left wing member of the Tory Party and/or the most right wing Labour Party member. That was a few years ago, though. I think Cameron/May era. I guess I was wondering how, after all the turmoil, you now fitted in to the current political context.
I appreciate your post.
Thank you Tim. Much appreciated. I don't remember writing that but certainly could have done.
I quite liked Cameron, and could live with May.
Living with May would surely drive you nuts? She’s surely quite OCD and would have vans driving round the neighbourhood telling you to clean up properly.
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.
How about not allowing people to leave the country with an unpaid debt to the government....simple but effective....
I was watching an episode of an old-ish TV show recently ("Hadleigh" if you must ask : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadleigh_(TV_series) ) and the episode was centred around whether the main character had taken too much currency out of the UK when they left for a trip to Spain.
I am too young (hurrah! at last!) or too poor (un-hurrah!) to have known that was really 'a thing'.
Every time you converted Sterling into dodgy foreign currency like francs or dollars you had to present your passport to the bank, who would stamp it like so:
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
Thanks.
Decent logic, displaying an impressive understanding of the local psephology. Why would I like to know? I have you down as a sensible political bellwether. I think I remember you once posting you'd be the most left wing member of the Tory Party and/or the most right wing Labour Party member. That was a few years ago, though. I think Cameron/May era. I guess I was wondering how, after all the turmoil, you now fitted in to the current political context.
I appreciate your post.
Thank you Tim. Much appreciated. I don't remember writing that but certainly could have done.
I quite liked Cameron, and could live with May.
Living with May would surely drive you nuts? She’s surely quite OCD and would have vans driving round the neighbourhood telling you to clean up properly.
Nagging vans would be a good innovation. They could drive around with an alarm to wake people up in the morning and remind people to do their chores.
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.
This is a fair comment as the Greens have had some impact on SNP but only at edges. The day to day reality is that the SNP controls Scotland with an iron fist. They have also centralised control taking power away from the councils. I live in Glasgow but don't know the Lord Provost (Mayor) name because she has no power unlike Khan or Burnham.
Reform is an unknown entity in Scotland but open to be used by a number of protest groups to influence power. The next big election in the UK is the Scottish vote and I would suggest the result is presently wide open. Reform may get no MSPs but it may also get more than 10.
The Edinburgh Trams show that if the opposition want they can change anything. Same with the attempts to reduce sectarianism, aborted by a Lab + LD U-turn when they realised it might upset some of their vote.
Of course Reform will get MSPs; more than it has Scottish MPs. It's the same with any other minority party - UKIP as was, the Tories, the Greens, and the LDs (who made sure the voting system had that effect, together with 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.
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.
How about not allowing people to leave the country with an unpaid debt to the government....simple but effective....
I was watching an episode of an old-ish TV show recently ("Hadleigh" if you must ask : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadleigh_(TV_series) ) and the episode was centred around whether the main character had taken too much currency out of the UK when they left for a trip to Spain.
I am too young (hurrah! at last!) or too poor (un-hurrah!) to have known that was really 'a thing'.
Every time you converted Sterling into dodgy foreign currency like francs or dollars you had to present your passport to the bank, who would stamp it like so:
Indeed, though as I was young at the time it didn't matter much to me.
Plans are being made for how to announce my passing when that sad day comes. My wish is to be stuffed and placed above a fireplace in Downing Street as a constant reminder that the inhabitants shouldn't do anything stupid. https://x.com/Number10cat/status/1827284885511237681
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.
"...Inequality is only painful if there's an expectation of equality. For all of history nobody has really expected equality..."
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Too early to tell?
Out of interest, Peter, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you vote?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
Certainly don't mind you asking, Tim, although I'm puzzled as to why you would like to know.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
Thanks.
Decent logic, displaying an impressive understanding of the local psephology. Why would I like to know? I have you down as a sensible political bellwether. I think I remember you once posting you'd be the most left wing member of the Tory Party and/or the most right wing Labour Party member. That was a few years ago, though. I think Cameron/May era. I guess I was wondering how, after all the turmoil, you now fitted in to the current political context.
I appreciate your post.
Thank you Tim. Much appreciated. I don't remember writing that but certainly could have done.
I quite liked Cameron, and could live with May.
Living with May would surely drive you nuts? She’s surely quite OCD and would have vans driving round the neighbourhood telling you to clean up properly.
Nagging vans would be a good innovation. They could drive around with an alarm to wake people up in the morning and remind people to do their chores.
Or get back to work and increase productivity. And get off PB. Which a remarkable amount seem to spend all day on exhorting the low paid to be more efficient.
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.
Err, students in England and Wales already get charged for the training. That's why some of them have over £100,000 in debt.
Of course, if you move to Australia permanently those debts get wiped after 25/30 years and you don't have to pay a penny. Nice one.
So change the training contract - move to Australia and get a £100k+ bill, payable immediately.
How the fuck would you enforce that? They don't have 100k for a start. Also, just go bankrupt, see ya!
The day they sign a contract with the NHS, the NHS pays off their student debt and replaces it with a loan from the NHS.
That can be enforced like any other debt. But perhaps you make it survive bankruptcy..
Plans are being made for how to announce my passing when that sad day comes. My wish is to be stuffed and placed above a fireplace in Downing Street as a constant reminder that the inhabitants shouldn't do anything stupid. https://x.com/Number10cat/status/1827284885511237681
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.
Make sure they can’t get confirmation of their medical qualifications while debt is outstanding
"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. "
We don’t know the full details, but I think that Alsopp and the council have both behaved properly.
The council is obliged by law to open an investigation on a complaint. So long as they didn’t take any action they don’t appear to have done anything wrong.
The issue is that someone took it on themselves to make a malicious complaint based on a tweet by a celebrity about her legitimate parenting choices. There should be a higher barrier to triggering a case
"...Labour has no plans for a wealth tax it has been revealed, despite Britain's biggest trade union Unite calling on the new government to implement one..."
I think the growing narrative is of Labour being rather cowardly. The Ming vase strategy might be OK for the campaign, but to govern is to choose, and so far the Labour government is choosing to be rather wishy washy on quite a few issues.
There is quite a common meme on Discord servers now for Keir to just be a emoji.
"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.)
I can never remember. Are the TERFs the goodies or the baddies?
"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. "
We don’t know the full details, but I think that Alsopp and the council have both behaved properly.
The council is obliged by law to open an investigation on a complaint. So long as they didn’t take any action they don’t appear to have done anything wrong.
The issue is that someone took it on themselves to make a malicious complaint based on a tweet by a celebrity about her legitimate parenting choices. There should be a higher barrier to triggering a case
When it takes a minimum, at absolute incredibly lucky best, six weeks for a social worker to undertake a care assessment of someone who is in major health difficulties and is waiting for social care support as in OT equipment or care workers coming to get them to the toilet is is fucking ridiculous they have time for this shit.
"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.)
I can never remember. Are the TERFs the goodies or the baddies?
"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. "
We don’t know the full details, but I think that Alsopp and the council have both behaved properly.
The council is obliged by law to open an investigation on a complaint. So long as they didn’t take any action they don’t appear to have done anything wrong.
The issue is that someone took it on themselves to make a malicious complaint based on a tweet by a celebrity about her legitimate parenting choices. There should be a higher barrier to triggering a case
A bigger issue is that the complaint now remains on file and cannot be removed by any means.
Mrs Flatlander is also "known to social services" as the result of a completely spurious report. There's no way of finding out who made this report or getting it expunged from the records.
The upper reaches of the Potomac. The Shenandoah, despite the song, is mostly in (east) Virginia.
North Branch OR South Branch of the Potomoc? The former is boundary between WVa and Maryland.
North fork, South Branch
In Britain, we’d give all these bits of stream different names, but maybe you Americans were running out of names to copylift by then? And there weren’t any natives around to ask.
[Though I don't suppose there are many Puma concolor couguar left in Virginia]
Supposedly there are plenty of bears hereabouts.
In the barn we are sleeping in, there are three goats, a pig, and a shedload of ducks and chickens sleeping in the next door room. And some peacocks outside. A puma round these here parts would have a feast. In almost heaven West Virginia, you can rent a renovated barn, and when you arrive, it’s still being used as a barn.
IanB2 - Since you are in West Virginia, and this is a politics site (most of the time), you may be interested in this from the 2006 Almanac of American Politics:
'In April 2000 the Clinton administration came out against a ban on mountaintop mining, but for stricter regulation; Al Gore was caught in the middle between environmentalists who supported it and West Virginia's all-Democratic congressional delegation which opposed it. George W. Bush, spotting an opening quickly, came out in favor of mountaintop mining and called for increased federal support of clean coal technology; he said the Clinton administration "fears coal" and managed to mention coal in one of the presidential debates. Bush's support of coal and his opposition to gun control enabled him to carry West Virginia 52%-46% -- a stunning upset in a state that hadn't voted for a Republican in a open presidential race since 1928. Its five electoral votes were crucial: Without them, it would not have mattered who won Florida.' (p. 1783)
(Mountaintop mining became a hot issue in 2000 because of a judge's decision -- which was reversed by an appeals court in April 2001.)
Comments
I should have noticed this sooner, but someone pointed out earlier that the reason he is so obsessed with her is he fancies her.
She looks like his daughter...
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-25/robert-kennedy-donald-trump-kamala-harris
https://x.com/DerekCressman/status/1827711691888718281
It will at least buy me enough alcohol to spend the last few hours of Western civilisation with a pleasant buzz ...
HTH.
I reckon he'd also been one of those insufferable people who try to pass themselves off as working class when in fact they are part of an elite.
BlackBeltBarrister"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5cXBZnJplQ
Following the conversation @DavidL and I had on the subject yesterday, Josh Hull has been called up by England.
6"7, left armed, very fast, terrible record in the Championship.
We shall see.
Doesn't he have a right arm ?
Andrew Neil
@afneil
After Biden’s car crash debate in June and the assassination attempt on Trump on July, Trump was pulling away with a healthy lead in nearly all the battleground states. Now, even before the impact of the DNC in Chicago, every battleground state is very close and well within polling margins of error.
Consider the French Revolution. Does it support your thesis?
Bonus points for explaining your logic…
"Next contestant Andrew Neil from
PaisleyGrasse, specialist subject the bleeding obvious".TL:DR
- We are fucked
- Neoliberalism killed us
- The government has to fix it because the private sector won't
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAJIJ2-8a8cBliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven.
This is a fair comment as the Greens have had some impact on SNP but only at edges. The day to day reality is that the SNP controls Scotland with an iron fist. They have also centralised control taking power away from the councils. I live in Glasgow but don't know the Lord Provost (Mayor) name because she has no power unlike Khan or Burnham.
Reform is an unknown entity in Scotland but open to be used by a number of protest groups to influence power. The next big election in the UK is the Scottish vote and I would suggest the result is presently wide open. Reform may get no MSPs but it may also get more than 10.
Anyway, I voted LD. It was a tactical vote. I would normally vote Labour, but am generally comfortable with voting LD if they have more chance of winning. It wasn't an obvious choice this time round. At a glance it might have appeared Labour had the better chance but it soon became apparent that they were not even putting up a show, quite possibly by agreement. If so, it would have been perfectly understandable because the sitting MP, Laurence Robertson, had a huge majority and it's not the sort of constituency where Labour can profit easily from dissatisfaction with the status quo.
As it happened it turned out to be one of best LD wins of the night. Tewkesbury was 88 on their target list, but Cameron Thomas got home by a comfortable 6,000. He was a good candidate, and Robertson was due for retirement anyway, so I was happy with my choice.
Don't worry about the like. I'm not a Like Whore. I do like to like other people's posts though, sometimes for the obvious reason, but often just as a way of indicating that I have read a post but didn't have time to reply. I wonder if others do likewise?
And on a related matter, I have never knowingly hit the Off Topic flag. I don't even know what it is there for.
Though it does tend also (not always) to indicate agreement.
Harris and Walz heading to Georgia as campaign seeks to build on convention momentum
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/kamala-harris-tim-walz-georgia-convention-momentum-rcna168039
… Earlier this month, Harris held the second rally of her presidential campaign in Atlanta, an event that featured Megan Thee Stallion; the campaign said it attracted more than 10,000 people.
It then launched a mobilization effort in the state and now touts more than 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers and 24 coordinated campaign offices sprawled across Georgia. The campaign refers to its ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”
The Harris-Walz campaign said it has recruited nearly 400,000 new volunteers nationally since Harris launched her presidential bid last month. The campaign refers to its ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”..
Reminder that for months Trump has told his rallies he will not give “one penny” to any school w/a vaccine mandate-from kindergarten thru college. Providing RFK Jr prominent role in public health empowers an advocate for undermining state vaccine requirements.
https://x.com/RonBrownstein/status/1827704053754982849
Important context: Every state requires vaccines to attend school. Trump’s pledge would defund all schools.
https://x.com/ECGreaves/status/1827713303759740980
I am too young (hurrah! at last!) or too poor (un-hurrah!) to have known that was really 'a thing'.
The campaign has a lot of resources - they raised $500m last month - but they one thing they don’t have to spare is time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_controls_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://nitter.poast.org/LBCNews/status/1827686188330750254#m
https://x.com/CyberPunkCortes/status/1827549288588624060
“ He looks like if Tommy Lee Jones ate Sponge Bob.”
https://x.com/IAmJohnAles/status/1827536136073572536
Decent logic, displaying an impressive understanding of the local psephology. Why would I like to know? I have you down as a sensible political bellwether. I think I remember you once posting you'd be the most left wing member of the Tory Party and/or the most right wing Labour Party member. That was a few years ago, though. I think Cameron/May era. I guess I was wondering how, after all the turmoil, you now fitted in to the current political context.
I appreciate your post.
"In North Carolina, the first state to begin early voting, his name has already been physically printed on the ballots in around 30 counties, so he’s probably stuck there, too."
https://www.natesilver.net/p/we-removed-rfk-jr-from-our-model
points to half empty arena.
I quite liked Cameron, and could live with May. On economics I'm quite right wing but am socially liberal. My Dad was a One Nation Tory and I would probably have been the same if that had been an option. He distanced himself from the Tories during the Thatcher years and I edged leftwards about the same time,
These days I'm happy enough with grown up government, so you can imagine what I thought of Johnson and Truss. It will probably be a long time before I weary of Starmer, but you never know! I may get there one day, if the Lord spares me long enough.
Sleep well.
Of course Reform will get MSPs; more than it has Scottish MPs. It's the same with any other minority party - UKIP as was, the Tories, the Greens, and the LDs (who made sure the voting system had that effect, together with Labour).
Plans are being made for how to announce my passing when that sad day comes. My wish is to be stuffed and placed above a fireplace in Downing Street as a constant reminder that the inhabitants shouldn't do anything stupid.
https://x.com/Number10cat/status/1827284885511237681
And get off PB. Which a remarkable amount seem to spend all day on exhorting the low paid to be more efficient.
That can be enforced like any other debt. But perhaps you make it survive bankruptcy..
The council is obliged by law to open an investigation on a complaint. So long as they didn’t take any action they don’t appear to have done anything wrong.
The issue is that someone took it on themselves to make a malicious complaint based on a tweet by a celebrity about her legitimate parenting choices. There should be a higher barrier to triggering a case
Mrs Flatlander is also "known to social services" as the result of a completely spurious report. There's no way of finding out who made this report or getting it expunged from the records.
In Britain, we’d give all these bits of stream different names, but maybe you Americans were running out of names to copylift by then? And there weren’t any natives around to ask.
[Though I don't suppose there are many Puma concolor couguar left in Virginia]
In the barn we are sleeping in, there are three goats, a pig, and a shedload of ducks and chickens sleeping in the next door room. And some peacocks outside. A puma round these here parts would have a feast. In almost heaven West Virginia, you can rent a renovated barn, and when you arrive, it’s still being used as a barn.
'In April 2000 the Clinton administration came out against a ban on mountaintop mining, but for stricter regulation; Al Gore was caught in the middle between environmentalists who supported it and West Virginia's all-Democratic congressional delegation which opposed it. George W. Bush, spotting an opening quickly, came out in favor of mountaintop mining and called for increased federal support of clean coal technology; he said the Clinton administration "fears coal" and managed to mention coal in one of the presidential debates. Bush's support of coal and his opposition to gun control enabled him to carry West Virginia 52%-46% -- a stunning upset in a state that hadn't voted for a Republican in a open presidential race since 1928. Its five electoral votes were crucial: Without them, it would not have mattered who won Florida.' (p. 1783)
(Mountaintop mining became a hot issue in 2000 because of a judge's decision -- which was reversed by an appeals court in April 2001.)
(North Bend is 30 miles east of Seattle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Bend,_Washington
In February, there was an attack on a group of women, who bravely fought back (as adults generally should). https://www.kuow.org/stories/cougar-attack-washington-state-cyclists