I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
That's an interesting and surprising post.
What I would say is that it is very unfortunate that people don't feel able to express their views. There is a very obvious path that can be observed, on one day people are making really lucid and impressive comments, then they 'take a side' and the quality of their comments and discourse goes rapidly downhill, to the point where it just reiterates propoganda. I am saying this now because it is something that can often be clearly observed in comments on Russia/Ukraine.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
Why do you think eastern Ukraine should go to Russia? And how do you define the 'east' ? And why do you trust Putin?
𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑲𝑹𝑨𝑲𝑬𝑵 𝑨𝑾𝑨𝑲𝑬𝑺
I think we should trade land for peace.
Russia should get North Wales. Ukraine should get Palestine. The Palestinians should get the Sakhalin. The Japanese should get Lichtenstein. The Northern Irish should get Swaziland.
What’s Swaziland done to deserve such a fate? If they’ve been naughty, just send them Allanbrooke as a punishment.
It's For Peace
I note that, to date, no one has come up with a better plan, than mine, to solve Israel/Palestine.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
This is definitely happening, especially among ‘non-doms’ such as people in Mrs Sunak’s position, who are moving their primary residence to places like the sandpit in anticipation of a tightening of the rules.
Didn't the Tories already tighten the Non Dom rules significantly? Presumably people leaving has nothing to do with that?
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
No, I think it's rubbish because you're simultaneously assuming that the next generation isn't producing anyone competent (without evidence), and that smashing the system will improve things - an idea which has been tested to destruction numerous times.
"People like Elon Musk" have no idea of how to run a government. He's good at running engineering companies - but as he's demonstrated at Twitter (which has lost something like three quarters of its revenue), step outside his area of competence, and he's no better than the average idiot in the street.
I think that is a reasonable comeback, particularly the point that Musk -politics is a different game to engineering, he would in my view achieve more by stepping back a bit from the propoganda war.
The one caveat though, is that this isn't 'my view' - I am trying to explain why there is a cohort of centrist voters who end up supporting Trump. Sometimes radical disruption is necessary, although Trump adopts a strategy of performatively breaking fundamental rules, which is dangerous, and is why I would ultimately not vote for him - were I to have a vote.
Regarding the universities, this is a view I have which formed by reading 'the coddling of the american mind' about 6 years ago. But it is not a total condemnation of academia. The point I might add is that public service/government work tends to increasingly attract activists due to the poor levels of pay compared with tech.
Oh, I don't disagree that there's a large cohort of voters in any election who think that 'shaking things up' can only be for the good - Brexit was a classic example of that determining the outcome. The GOP under Trump has certainly pushed that about as far as it will go.
But the dynamic is a little different from 2016. Trump has a record in government, which really wasn't all that great; he actually didn't accomplish any of the things he promised last time round.
"People on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice"
"On your team" - that's a pretty vile lie. Vance is a thoroughgoing arsehole.
In the Elegy book, towards the end, he writes about what might be called anger management type issues if I recall correctly. His upbring was in an environment where screaming at people rather than a quiet chiding and defending your own family with force, sometimes violence was ingrained. One relative attacks a man with a chainsaw for example iirc. This is the hillbilly way.
His wife has to calm him down sometimes and remind him he is behaving inappropriately as he is no longer in the mountains of Kentucky. I think there is an example where he is about to get out of the car and paste someone who cut him up driving but she talks him out of it.
Perhaps she is not around during this campaign?
Have you ever seen the series "Justified"? It is somewhat exaggerated, but portrays someone who has come from that background and has responded by acquiring a veneer of extreme calm and reasonableness. As he takes his revenge on his upbringing. Literally.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
Why do you think eastern Ukraine should go to Russia? And how do you define the 'east' ? And why do you trust Putin?
𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑲𝑹𝑨𝑲𝑬𝑵 𝑨𝑾𝑨𝑲𝑬𝑺
I think we should trade land for peace.
Russia should get North Wales. Ukraine should get Palestine. The Palestinians should get the Sakhalin. The Japanese should get Lichtenstein. The Northern Irish should get Swaziland.
Big G won't be happy!
Hey, "It's For Peace"
How does it go - "Justice requires sacrifices. Are you prepared to be one of them?"
It's fine with me. Can we also give somebody Orpington?
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
I think the Democrats broadly speaking represent the status quo consensus, and the status quo hasn't been working for a lot of Americans for a long time.
Desperate people will reach for desperate measures, or even simply destructive ones. Bad change is at least change.
I do not think that the analysis that the US is heading towards inevitable collapse due to woke graduates stands up to any scrutiny. The extreme motivated woke are a small minority, and while many people may go along with it to an extent, generally I'd expect the extreme to be tempered by the majority.
Secondly, Trump is extremely damaging to the basic institutions and norms of a democracy, and is essentially a self-interested grifter with a God complex.
Michael Collins said of the Treaty with Britain that: "In my opinion it gives us freedom, not the ultimate freedom that all nations desire and develop to, but the freedom to achieve it."
In a similar way, the basic institutions and norms of democracy do not guarantee health, wealth and happiness for all, but they do provide the means to achieve those things if used competently by the people and leaders of a country.
Trump would destroy all that and he would preclude the achievement of any positive end. I'll go further and say that his presence as a serious contender in the election acts to prevent any meaningful debate and scrutiny of the Democrats by a different party with different ideas about how to achieve health, wealth and happiness. And since I believe it is open debate, that above all else, is the fundamental building block of democracy, which leads to bad ideas being discarded, and better ideas being adopted, I do not think significant positive change in the US can occur until Trump is defeated and an opposition to the Democrats emerges that respects democracy and the rule of law, and isn't dominated by the self-interest and egomania of an individual.
For that reason, any reasonable person must conclude that Trump has to be defeated to defend democracy, and any chance of constructively challenging the status quo in the future. Any other conclusion is, in my opinion, seriously in error.
But, of course, people frequently make mistakes, including myself.
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Why does that mean he has to? Is it the law?
If so, as a matter of interest, what other sorts of cases does the DPP have to announce at a press conference?
People forget it was nearly two years from the start of the police investigation to the charging decision.
There was plenty of comment on here and elsewhere that it was an establishment cover up (not realising there were other issues, Constance Briscoe and Isabel Oakeshott at first refusing to reveal her sources).
Had it been left to a court listing it would have embolden those siren voices.
Not seeing anything about press conferences. DPP should not be paying any attention to the court of public opinion. If he wanted to mark the occasion a commemorative tea towel would have been fine.
This rabbit hole has brought me to the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bodkin_Adams btw. Fascinating and hard to reconcile with the well established fact that the courts always get it right, do you hear? in medical murder trials.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
I put the words 'Marshal' and 'Wade' in the same sentence on a thread about Scotland/seditious Scots.
My genius is unparalleled
I'm baffled that you've denied yourself the pleasure of cackling inwardly that no-one noticed your genius. Then you could have swooped in and smugly pointed it out and hour or so later.
@TheScreamingEagles is famous for his belief in moderation and deferred gratification
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
On thread: I'm no Scot, but I'm never convinced Gordon Brown's interventions are terribly long term helpful for the purpose of unionism. They seem to amount to a) I'm brilliant, everyone else is an arse, and b) Scotland, if you vote unionist, we'll give you more money and power. It's not really advancing a long-term philosophy for a union or for prosperity within that union, and nor is it criticising the case for independence. Brown - and indeed Darling - bear responsibility for the architecture of devolution, so have to maintain a facade that it's all working brilliantly, which doesn't make for an effective critique of independence.
No doubt he will emerge from his coffin in the crypt in the BBC Scotland studio again today to tell us where we’re all going wrong.
Yesterday, Gordon Brown was opining in the Guardian on the dangers of anti-immigrant populism. Yes, the same "British Jobs for British Workers" Gordon Brown.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
That's an interesting and surprising post.
What I would say is that it is very unfortunate that people don't feel able to express their views. There is a very obvious path that can be observed, on one day people are making really lucid and impressive comments, then they 'take a side' and the quality of their comments and discourse goes rapidly downhill, to the point where it just reiterates propoganda. I am saying this now because it is something that can often be clearly observed in comments on Russia/Ukraine.
There are certain topics wherefrom people on PB are "not allowed" to dissent.
And if they do then there is a pile on. Most notable as you say on Ukraine/Russia where any deviation from the Ukraine will be in Moscow by next Christmas/Easter/Start of the Grouse Shooting Season line was, and to an extent still is met by the classic PB "pile on" (analogous to being beaten around the head with dandelions, that said).
People on PB get it into their heads that there is a "right" way to look at the world. Trump is of course another and hence Nick's acuity in understanding the dynamics of him posting what he did.
It's disappointing that PB should be like this but there you go.
If you campaign talking a lot about growth, then win, ditch investment, increase public sector pay, and have a vague and broad sentiment about hiking taxes on the private sector (except North Sea energy firms when it seems pretty specific) then obviously people are going to talk about that.
Labour could've avoided that by either being specific in the election campaign instead of their very cautious approach, or by emphasising growth in government as well as during the campaign. Instead they've just gone up to a blank blackboard, written TAX HIKES in big letters, underlined it, left it for 2 months and are grumpy some pesky pupils have started scrawling suggestions underneath it.
Given on current Holyrood polls Sarwar is likely to become next FM or the SNP and Greens to at least lose their majority and the number of SNP MPs are in single digits, the prospect of indyref2 is likely dead in the water for the foreseeable
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It's rare this site sees insightful and thought-provoking posts these days so thank you for this.
On the Ukraine, you may be surprised to hear I don't wholly disagree but being the good liberal internationalist I am, the decision should sit with the people not the leaders.
I'll start with an obvious - most of the world (apart from the Russians and the Ukrainians doing the fighting and dying) has adapted pretty well to the conflict. Life goes on and indeed there's plenty of money to be made by arms manufacturers and others and it has given a boost to the arguments of the defence establishment it should get more Government money rather than less. The "rules" seem to have been set and as along as everyone stays within them we can all get along (apart from the aforementioned Russians and Ukrainians).
If I could stop the fighting in 24 hours (pace Trump), I would propose a withdrawal of all forces to pre-2022 borders and original inhabitants allowed to return. A UN peacekeeping force (a nice little earner for Brazil, Nigeria and India) to patrol the Donetsk and Lukhansk areas and in six months (180 days from any ceasefire) a referendum to be held which has two options either a) part of Ukraine or b) part of Russia and all parties to abide by said outcome.
For Crimea, a similar referendum but with three options a) Ukraine b) Russia c) an Independent state whose independence would be guaranteed by Russia, Ukraine and NATO.
If you campaign talking a lot about growth, then win, ditch investment, increase public sector pay, and have a vague and broad sentiment about hiking taxes on the private sector (except North Sea energy firms when it seems pretty specific) then obviously people are going to talk about that.
Labour could've avoided that by either being specific in the election campaign instead of their very cautious approach, or by emphasising growth in government as well as during the campaign. Instead they've just gone up to a blank blackboard, written TAX HIKES in big letters, underlined it, left it for 2 months and are grumpy some pesky pupils have started scrawling suggestions underneath it.
While also looking at ready to go infrastructure investment projects and putting them into the maybe we will cancel it pile...
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
That's an interesting and surprising post.
What I would say is that it is very unfortunate that people don't feel able to express their views. There is a very obvious path that can be observed, on one day people are making really lucid and impressive comments, then they 'take a side' and the quality of their comments and discourse goes rapidly downhill, to the point where it just reiterates propoganda. I am saying this now because it is something that can often be clearly observed in comments on Russia/Ukraine.
Just because I think Nick's wrong on this doesn't mean I don't want to hear from him. Right or wrong, he's a reasoned voice on most stuff. And it is certainly worth discussing what a stable pace settlement might require, as we've had a couple which weren't at all stable.
It's fine with me. Can we also give somebody Orpington?
I sailed with a Grubber from Orpington who maintained that he was pleased to have a small cock because "all the diseases are right at the back of the fanny". True story.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
This is definitely happening, especially among ‘non-doms’ such as people in Mrs Sunak’s position, who are moving their primary residence to places like the sandpit in anticipation of a tightening of the rules.
UAE is offering 10-year ‘golden visa’ opportunities to anyone with a salary of $100k or making an investment of $500k.
So we get to a point where Government policy is predicated on not "frightening" a tiny group of people who just happen to be very wealthy.
In any case, they could decide to up and move to Singapore or Dubai or wherever at any time anyway.
We know wealth buys speech and presumably those with money are seeking to influence Government policy via articles in CIty AM, the Mail and elsewhere.
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
You'll have to find a new basis for your long standing hatred
To which of my long standing hatreds are you referring?
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
I doubt DJT has the attention span and organisational capability to alter, in any material sense beyond messaging, US policy on Ukraine.
Of course he does. All it would require is the cessation of US aid. A GOP majority in Congress would probably sort that out for him.
Most GOP Senators hate Putin unlike Trump and GOP House representatives. In 2012 now Senator Romney was harder line on Putin than Obama
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
That's an interesting and surprising post.
What I would say is that it is very unfortunate that people don't feel able to express their views. There is a very obvious path that can be observed, on one day people are making really lucid and impressive comments, then they 'take a side' and the quality of their comments and discourse goes rapidly downhill, to the point where it just reiterates propoganda. I am saying this now because it is something that can often be clearly observed in comments on Russia/Ukraine.
There are certain topics wherefrom people on PB are "not allowed" to dissent.
And if they do then there is a pile on. Most notable as you say on Ukraine/Russia where any deviation from the Ukraine will be in Moscow by next Christmas/Easter/Start of the Grouse Shooting Season line was, and to an extent still is met by the classic PB "pile on" (analogous to being beaten around the head with dandelions, that said).
People on PB get it into their heads that there is a "right" way to look at the world. Trump is of course another and hence Nick's acuity in understanding the dynamics of him posting what he did.
It's disappointing that PB should be like this but there you go.
And yet there's a notable lack of a pile on re Nick's post, is there not?
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
In this case the cure is worse than the disease
Your analysis is broadly correct, but Trump is not the answer
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
You'll have to find a new basis for your long standing hatred
To which of my long standing hatreds are you referring?
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
I have a hatred of long standing. Hurts my feet and legs after a while.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
The current tax system, which favours enterprise and entrepeneurship, is a major draw for investment and high skilled immigrants. If you whack up the CGT tax rates, then the country becomes less appealing and people will leave, it then loses high rate tax payers and get less CGT and also lose investment.
This is something I learned when I was 17 and doing A-level politics/economics. I thought it was something universally understood and culturally entrenched in the British system, but perhaps the current government are just in denial of it.
If the government want to switch to a different system, IE a north european social democratic model, it takes decades and generations to build up, and a lot of pain in the process; you cannot just switch over to it in one budget.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
Claims are not outlandish by the standards of, let's say, what Denis Healey was planning for the 1979 to 83 Labour government. Indeed the biggest scare story is equality of CGT and income tax, last done by Nigel Lawson.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
You'll have to find a new basis for your long standing hatred
To which of my long standing hatreds are you referring?
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
I have a hatred of long standing. Hurts my feet and legs after a while.
Roll *into* it - Get a standing desk. Stand all day.
On thread: I'm no Scot, but I'm never convinced Gordon Brown's interventions are terribly long term helpful for the purpose of unionism. They seem to amount to a) I'm brilliant, everyone else is an arse, and b) Scotland, if you vote unionist, we'll give you more money and power. It's not really advancing a long-term philosophy for a union or for prosperity within that union, and nor is it criticising the case for independence. Brown - and indeed Darling - bear responsibility for the architecture of devolution, so have to maintain a facade that it's all working brilliantly, which doesn't make for an effective critique of independence.
No doubt he will emerge from his coffin in the crypt in the BBC Scotland studio again today to tell us where we’re all going wrong.
Yesterday, Gordon Brown was opining in the Guardian on the dangers of anti-immigrant populism. Yes, the same "British Jobs for British Workers" Gordon Brown.
The chancellor told an audience in London that obliging migrants to carry out community work would help introduce them to the people they will be living alongside and would show they could contribute to society.
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
You'll have to find a new basis for your long standing hatred
To which of my long standing hatreds are you referring?
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
I have friends who work for the CPS and it isn’t a public document.
On thread: I'm no Scot, but I'm never convinced Gordon Brown's interventions are terribly long term helpful for the purpose of unionism. They seem to amount to a) I'm brilliant, everyone else is an arse, and b) Scotland, if you vote unionist, we'll give you more money and power. It's not really advancing a long-term philosophy for a union or for prosperity within that union, and nor is it criticising the case for independence. Brown - and indeed Darling - bear responsibility for the architecture of devolution, so have to maintain a facade that it's all working brilliantly, which doesn't make for an effective critique of independence.
No doubt he will emerge from his coffin in the crypt in the BBC Scotland studio again today to tell us where we’re all going wrong.
Yesterday, Gordon Brown was opining in the Guardian on the dangers of anti-immigrant populism. Yes, the same "British Jobs for British Workers" Gordon Brown.
The chancellor told an audience in London that obliging migrants to carry out community work would help introduce them to the people they will be living alongside and would show they could contribute to society.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
I doubt DJT has the attention span and organisational capability to alter, in any material sense beyond messaging, US policy on Ukraine.
Of course he does. All it would require is the cessation of US aid. A GOP majority in Congress would probably sort that out for him.
Most GOP Senators hate Putin unlike Trump and GOP House representatives. In 2012 now Senator Romney was harder line on Putin than Obama
And the House of Representatives, which holds the purse strings, repeatedly blocked aid. It would be extremely easy for Trump as president to stop all further aid, even that already funded, if he was determined to do so.
If you campaign talking a lot about growth, then win, ditch investment, increase public sector pay, and have a vague and broad sentiment about hiking taxes on the private sector (except North Sea energy firms when it seems pretty specific) then obviously people are going to talk about that.
Labour could've avoided that by either being specific in the election campaign instead of their very cautious approach, or by emphasising growth in government as well as during the campaign. Instead they've just gone up to a blank blackboard, written TAX HIKES in big letters, underlined it, left it for 2 months and are grumpy some pesky pupils have started scrawling suggestions underneath it.
The problem has been they tried not to frighten thre sheep by ruling out changes to income tax and VAT. A more honest approach would have been to say the Conservatives dug us a huge hole and it's up to Labour to climb out and fill in the hole.
My personal view is 25p basic rate and 50p higher rate is the way forward - pain, yes, no question but we are £80-90 billion in the aforementioned hole and while I'd like to see something serious on land value taxation (as well as property value taxation), we need to have all options available.
There's also the not inconsiderable amount of debt interest we have to pay though with interest rates on the way down, that becomes less of an issue.
What is the current independence polling anyway? Mid to high 40s covers a lot of sins.
No is consistently 48% or so. Yes goes up to about 45% depending on Don't Knows who seem to tend more to Yes. There's a sharp divide at about 35. Those younger than that age are strongly pro independence. It's possible there will be a majority for independence in say twenty years time. That cohort doesn't seem likely to change it's mind.
Just give the Scots devomax like Canada and otherwise refuse nationalists another independence referendum ever again like Madrid
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
If you campaign talking a lot about growth, then win, ditch investment, increase public sector pay, and have a vague and broad sentiment about hiking taxes on the private sector (except North Sea energy firms when it seems pretty specific) then obviously people are going to talk about that.
Labour could've avoided that by either being specific in the election campaign instead of their very cautious approach, or by emphasising growth in government as well as during the campaign. Instead they've just gone up to a blank blackboard, written TAX HIKES in big letters, underlined it, left it for 2 months and are grumpy some pesky pupils have started scrawling suggestions underneath it.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
Claims are not outlandish by the standards of, let's say, what Denis Healey was planning for the 1979 to 83 Labour government. Indeed the biggest scare story is equality of CGT and income tax, last done by Nigel Lawson.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
You'll have to find a new basis for your long standing hatred
To which of my long standing hatreds are you referring?
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
I have friends who work for the CPS and it isn’t a public document.
Interesting. Is there a reason why it is not public? I thought that the modern "style" in the justice system was to maximise transparency - hence the publication of all the detail of sentencing guidelines etc. Rather than the traditional* British EverythingIsAStateSecret approach.
*Traditional after WWI. Previous to that, making anything secret was considered a bit outlandish.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
Notes on the Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street mentioned yesterday.
My photo quota is the delightfully inchoate-but-powerless fury in the Daily Mail about it. Khaaaannnnn ! 4 articles in 24 hours no less. Possible exclusion of buses was discussed, and how that could limit access for some disabled. Exclusion of cycling is also up for discussion in the scheme. There's a piece in road.cc linked below about it, and some interesting comments from transport type cyclists who would not have too much problem if decent alternatives were provided.
It's going to be quite a prototype for other places, I think, with the parties in the conversation. Charities such as Wheels for Wellbeing are engaged, as I expect will RNIB etc and the various fringe groups such as NFBUK who feed videos to the tabloids.
Background:
- One question is whether Oxford Street is sustainable as shopping.
- This proposal goes back to Mayor Khan's first manifesto in 2016.
- The 2016 scheme was afaics scuppered by the then Tory-controlled Westminster Borough, which is now controlled by Labour.
- The Labour Borough have a current set of proposals which has been out for discussion (plans have been online). Khan has blindsided them slightly, but they are talking about working together.
- There are various models around in London.
eg 1 Exhibition Road used shared-space values (ie don't protect pedestrians from motor vehicles, and remove designs which can be read by cane users, guide dogs etc) which are a imo always a disaster but were the design fashion in about 2006-2010. More used in Scotland aiui, and Visually Impaired hate them afaics. eg 2 The Aldwych is a motor-vehicle excluded except for access space aiui which is popular, but is not mainly retail, also aiui. eg 3 Kensington High Street, which has been returned by Borough of K&C to being a traffic sewer, having removed the mobility tracks. eg 4 A model used eg in central Nottingham where certain categories of cross traffic on side streets are allowed.
- Cycle traffic on Oxford Street ran at about 200 per hour at peak time in 2017, and similarly on parallel routes. No idea what current numbers are; trend would say 400-500 on a similar basis.
- There are issues bubbling under around categorisation of mobility aids eg clip-ons that turn a wheelchair into a hand-cycle but are not official "mobility aids" at this time, and relevant charities are engaged.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
That's an interesting and surprising post.
What I would say is that it is very unfortunate that people don't feel able to express their views. There is a very obvious path that can be observed, on one day people are making really lucid and impressive comments, then they 'take a side' and the quality of their comments and discourse goes rapidly downhill, to the point where it just reiterates propoganda. I am saying this now because it is something that can often be clearly observed in comments on Russia/Ukraine.
There are certain topics wherefrom people on PB are "not allowed" to dissent.
And if they do then there is a pile on. Most notable as you say on Ukraine/Russia where any deviation from the Ukraine will be in Moscow by next Christmas/Easter/Start of the Grouse Shooting Season line was, and to an extent still is met by the classic PB "pile on" (analogous to being beaten around the head with dandelions, that said).
People on PB get it into their heads that there is a "right" way to look at the world. Trump is of course another and hence Nick's acuity in understanding the dynamics of him posting what he did.
It's disappointing that PB should be like this but there you go.
And yet there's a notable lack of a pile on re Nick's post, is there not?
Nick is a PB national treasure and has actually done the job whereas we are all internet wannabees. But, re Ukraine, in the early days he was indeed subject to PB Ukraine Rightthink Police actions.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
Claims are not outlandish by the standards of, let's say, what Denis Healey was planning for the 1979 to 83 Labour government. Indeed the biggest scare story is equality of CGT and income tax, last done by Nigel Lawson.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
The 22 billion is a hole of Reeves own making.
This Budget can't come soon enough. The endless speculation especially in right leaning media is getting ridiculous.
On thread: I'm no Scot, but I'm never convinced Gordon Brown's interventions are terribly long term helpful for the purpose of unionism. They seem to amount to a) I'm brilliant, everyone else is an arse, and b) Scotland, if you vote unionist, we'll give you more money and power. It's not really advancing a long-term philosophy for a union or for prosperity within that union, and nor is it criticising the case for independence. Brown - and indeed Darling - bear responsibility for the architecture of devolution, so have to maintain a facade that it's all working brilliantly, which doesn't make for an effective critique of independence.
No doubt he will emerge from his coffin in the crypt in the BBC Scotland studio again today to tell us where we’re all going wrong.
Yesterday, Gordon Brown was opining in the Guardian on the dangers of anti-immigrant populism. Yes, the same "British Jobs for British Workers" Gordon Brown.
The chancellor told an audience in London that obliging migrants to carry out community work would help introduce them to the people they will be living alongside and would show they could contribute to society.
If you campaign talking a lot about growth, then win, ditch investment, increase public sector pay, and have a vague and broad sentiment about hiking taxes on the private sector (except North Sea energy firms when it seems pretty specific) then obviously people are going to talk about that.
Labour could've avoided that by either being specific in the election campaign instead of their very cautious approach, or by emphasising growth in government as well as during the campaign. Instead they've just gone up to a blank blackboard, written TAX HIKES in big letters, underlined it, left it for 2 months and are grumpy some pesky pupils have started scrawling suggestions underneath it.
The problem has been they tried not to frighten thre sheep by ruling out changes to income tax and VAT. A more honest approach would have been to say the Conservatives dug us a huge hole and it's up to Labour to climb out and fill in the hole.
My personal view is 25p basic rate and 50p higher rate is the way forward - pain, yes, no question but we are £80-90 billion in the aforementioned hole and while I'd like to see something serious on land value taxation (as well as property value taxation), we need to have all options available.
There's also the not inconsiderable amount of debt interest we have to pay though with interest rates on the way down, that becomes less of an issue.
Worth pointing out that the hole is partly Covid-related, inc Sunak's ill-advised and largely unmonitored mass handouts which at every turn Labour said wasn't enough and economic-killing authoritarian measures which at every turn the Labour Party said wasn't enough.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
Claims are not outlandish by the standards of, let's say, what Denis Healey was planning for the 1979 to 83 Labour government. Indeed the biggest scare story is equality of CGT and income tax, last done by Nigel Lawson.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
The 22 billion is a hole of Reeves own making.
You must have missed the tall bloke making unfunded NI reductions.
It's fine with me. Can we also give somebody Orpington?
I sailed with a Grubber from Orpington who maintained that he was pleased to have a small cock because "all the diseases are right at the back of the fanny". True story.
My son's football team occasionally meets teams from Orpington in the SELKent league and your account is entirely in line with my experience. Fond memories of the time one of their (14 year old) players called the ref a "sp***ic c**t" and tried to punch him in the face.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
You'll have to find a new basis for your long standing hatred
To which of my long standing hatreds are you referring?
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
I have friends who work for the CPS and it isn’t a public document.
Interesting. Is there a reason why it is not public? I thought that the modern "style" in the justice system was to maximise transparency - hence the publication of all the detail of sentencing guidelines etc. Rather than the traditional* British EverythingIsAStateSecret approach.
*Traditional after WWI. Previous to that, making anything secret was considered a bit outlandish.
None of us knows what it says, but I would be astonished if it expressly or by implication required or permitted Starmer's conduct. Unless of course he wrote it.
Notes on the Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street mentioned yesterday.
My photo quota is the delightful fury in the Daily Mail about it. Khaaaannnnn ! 4 articles in 24 hours no less. Possible exclusion of buses was discussed, and how that could limit access for some disabled. Exclusion of cycling is also discussed. There's a piece in road.cc linked below about it, and some interesting comments from transport type cyclists who would not have too much problem provided decent alternatives were provided.
It's going to be quite a prototype for other places, I think, with the parties in the conversation.
Background:
- One question is whether Oxford Street is sustainable as shopping.
- This proposal goes back to Mayor Khan's first manifesto in 2016.
- The 2016 scheme was afaics scuppered by the then Tory-controlled Westminster Borough, which is now controlled by Labour.
- The Labour Borough have a current set of proposals which has been out for discussion (plans have been online). Khan has blindsided them slightly, but they are talking about working together.
- There are various models around in London.
eg 1 Exhibition Road used shared-space values (ie don't protect pedestrians from motor vehicles, and remove designs which can be read by cane users, guide dogs etc) which are a imo always a disaster but were the design fashion in about 2006-2010. More used in Scotland aiui, and Visually Impaired hate them afaics. eg 2 The Aldwych is a motor-vehicle excluded except for access space aiui which is popular, but is not mainly retail, also aiui. eg 3 Kensington High Street, which has been returned by Borough of K&C to being a traffic sewer, having removed the mobility tracks. eg 4 A model used eg in central Nottingham where certain categories of cross traffic on side streets are allowed.
- Cycle traffic on Oxford Street ran at about 200 per hour at peak time in 2017, and similarly on parallel routes. No idea what current numbers are; trend would say 400-500 on a similar basis.
- There are issues bubbling under around categorisation of mobility aids eg clip-ons that turn a wheelchair into a hand-cycle but are not official "mobility aids" at this time, and relevant charities are engaged.
I've been trying to find the original proposal, by some architects, to *raise* Oxford Street. That is, they proposed, some years ago, to put a pedestrianised "roof" over the a major chunk of it. The idea was that, over time, the shops would evolve their facades to have opening at the new level - initially you'd go "downstairs" to enter a shop, as now.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
The current tax system, which favours enterprise and entrepeneurship, is a major draw for investment and high skilled immigrants. If you whack up the CGT tax rates, then the country becomes less appealing and people will leave, it then loses high rate tax payers and get less CGT and also lose investment.
This is something I learned when I was 17 and doing A-level politics/economics. I thought it was something universally understood and culturally entrenched in the British system, but perhaps the current government are just in denial of it.
If the government want to switch to a different system, IE a north european social democratic model, it takes decades and generations to build up, and a lot of pain in the process; you cannot just switch over to it in one budget.
I don't follow why someone who is employed in IT at a bank is so worried about CGT? Unless they are being paid in shares or are buying loads of shares then why are they facing it? If they have bought property (other than residential) out of their earnings then they could be hit, but, and its a big but, selling now and leaving now is too late. The sale will not go through in time for the October budget so any gain made to date will be hit at new rates.
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
You'll have to find a new basis for your long standing hatred
To which of my long standing hatreds are you referring?
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
I have friends who work for the CPS and it isn’t a public document.
Under which DPP was it drafted and was it before or after Starmer's showboating?
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
That's an interesting and surprising post.
What I would say is that it is very unfortunate that people don't feel able to express their views. There is a very obvious path that can be observed, on one day people are making really lucid and impressive comments, then they 'take a side' and the quality of their comments and discourse goes rapidly downhill, to the point where it just reiterates propoganda. I am saying this now because it is something that can often be clearly observed in comments on Russia/Ukraine.
There are certain topics wherefrom people on PB are "not allowed" to dissent.
And if they do then there is a pile on. Most notable as you say on Ukraine/Russia where any deviation from the Ukraine will be in Moscow by next Christmas/Easter/Start of the Grouse Shooting Season line was, and to an extent still is met by the classic PB "pile on" (analogous to being beaten around the head with dandelions, that said).
People on PB get it into their heads that there is a "right" way to look at the world. Trump is of course another and hence Nick's acuity in understanding the dynamics of him posting what he did.
It's disappointing that PB should be like this but there you go.
And yet there's a notable lack of a pile on re Nick's post, is there not?
Nick is a PB national treasure and has actually done the job whereas we are all internet wannabees. But, re Ukraine, in the early days he was indeed subject to PB Ukraine Rightthink Police actions.
Which tends to mean "How can you question my ideas?"
I recall one correspondent who got very upset with the CNN poll, on the eve of the invasion, which showed that no bits of Ukraine wanted to be bits of Russia.
A friend's father, honest and apolitical as far as I could tell, once told me a story about dealing with Starmer. I'll call my friend's father Ted. Ted was a Para in Northern Ireland in 1969 during Bloody Sunday, though he wasn't present at the events. Anyway, when Starmer was in Northern Ireland twenty years ago, he tried to get Ted to alter his testimony to discredit his fellow Paras and thereby facilitate shafting the soldiers and pleasing Sinn Fein. Ted refused and Starmer indirectly threatened him with various dire consequences, none of which happened.
One can believe Ted or not as one chooses, though as I say he seemed perfectly straightforward to me and his opinion of politicians seemed to be that they are all liars. But I found his opinion of Starmer of a piece with others I've heard from people who have dealt with him professionally and his behaviour during the aftermath of the referendum. And this is a man who now poses with a Union Jack behind him at every opportunity. I can only guess Ted's feelings every time he sees that.
I know someone who worked closely with Starmer as DPP (they were his counterpart as the head of another stakeholder in the legal system). They were not complimentary about his ethics and decision making processes.
A deep dive into the UFO conspiracy theorists/grifters who created all the fuss in recent years and convinced some gullible people, including US politicians, that there was something going on: https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/s/p82r0FsKqf
I don't think that was worth carrying over. Skinwalker was always a joke, this is like saying Godzilla never existed so that clears up the dinosaur hoax.
'A group known as "the invisible college" have been pushing for UFO disclosure for decades." (Your Reddit link). What type of theory is being advanced by this sentence? Have you ever in your life seen anything so beautifully circular?
If you want to attack a theory and you find yourself calling its proponents grifters in your first line you are not the best person to attack it, not even if they are in fact grifters. On many contested issues Yeats is spot on:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Have a read of the pentagon report of March this year. It manages to conclude that there's no evidence of UFOs without calling anyone a grifter.
If you’re going to spend time reading anything on this topic, skip the Reddit threads, Mick West posts, books or AARO reports. And instead read the initial draft of the 2023 ‘UAP Disclosure Act’, an adjunct to the National Defense Authorisation Act. It was passed by the senate but half gutted by Mike Turner in the committee stage in the House. The unpassed elements are likely to return to the floor this autumn.
The bipartisan bill was drafted by the office of the Democrat Senate Majority Leadership, and passionately argued for on the floor by Schumer. It’s unthinkable its content was not cleared first by the Democrat White House and deemed a legislative priority at a moment of almost total congressional gridlock.
And then ask yourself why the US government felt it important to define in law the meaning of “technology of non human intelligence origin”, to attempt to assert eminent domain over such technology held by the private sector, and to seek a presidential appointed review board (to include amongst others an economist and psychologist) to recommend public data releases thereof.
The answer is that there have been a reported forty plus highly cleared people testifying under oath to Congress the veracity of such claims.
Whichever way you cut it, it’s by far the most intriguing political story in decades. Because either true or false, it implies a grotesque undermining of US democracy, easily surpassing Iran Contra or Watergate. It’s amazed me that so many on here still don’t seem to recognise that.
Keep the faith!
There is NOTHING coming. Just more grift, more books, more TV shows, more bullshit. And you are being played if you think that genuine disclosure of Alien life making contact is coming.
Starmer held a press conference to announce the prosecution of Chris Huhne. It's the absolute foundation of the criminal justice system that you do nothing which might create prejudice against the Defendant without a bloody good reason to do so. There was no need to announce the prosecution except by listing R v Huhne in the relevant court, and let the local press pick it up. Starmer's charade created maximum prejudice - ooh look, the highest prosecutor in the land on national telly says there's a Case To Answer - for no benefit other than to raise Starmer's fishlike profile. I have despised him ever since.
He had to, it was the prosecution of a sitting cabinet minister.
Under what statute, rule of common law, constitutional convention or international treaty?
You'll have to find a new basis for your long standing hatred
To which of my long standing hatreds are you referring?
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
I have friends who work for the CPS and it isn’t a public document.
Under which DPP was it drafted and was it before or after Starmer's showboating?
Notes on the Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street mentioned yesterday.
My photo quota is the delightful fury in the Daily Mail about it. Khaaaannnnn ! 4 articles in 24 hours no less. Possible exclusion of buses was discussed, and how that could limit access for some disabled. Exclusion of cycling is also discussed. There's a piece in road.cc linked below about it, and some interesting comments from transport type cyclists who would not have too much problem provided decent alternatives were provided.
It's going to be quite a prototype for other places, I think, with the parties in the conversation.
Background:
- One question is whether Oxford Street is sustainable as shopping.
- This proposal goes back to Mayor Khan's first manifesto in 2016.
- The 2016 scheme was afaics scuppered by the then Tory-controlled Westminster Borough, which is now controlled by Labour.
- The Labour Borough have a current set of proposals which has been out for discussion (plans have been online). Khan has blindsided them slightly, but they are talking about working together.
- There are various models around in London.
eg 1 Exhibition Road used shared-space values (ie don't protect pedestrians from motor vehicles, and remove designs which can be read by cane users, guide dogs etc) which are a imo always a disaster but were the design fashion in about 2006-2010. More used in Scotland aiui, and Visually Impaired hate them afaics. eg 2 The Aldwych is a motor-vehicle excluded except for access space aiui which is popular, but is not mainly retail, also aiui. eg 3 Kensington High Street, which has been returned by Borough of K&C to being a traffic sewer, having removed the mobility tracks. eg 4 A model used eg in central Nottingham where certain categories of cross traffic on side streets are allowed.
- Cycle traffic on Oxford Street ran at about 200 per hour at peak time in 2017, and similarly on parallel routes. No idea what current numbers are; trend would say 400-500 on a similar basis.
- There are issues bubbling under around categorisation of mobility aids eg clip-ons that turn a wheelchair into a hand-cycle but are not official "mobility aids" at this time, and relevant charities are engaged.
I've been trying to find the original proposal, by some architects, to *raise* Oxford Street. That is, they proposed, some years ago, to put a pedestrianised "roof" over the a major chunk of it. The idea was that, over time, the shops would evolve their facades to have opening at the new level - initially you'd go "downstairs" to enter a shop, as now.
It seemed an intriguing idea in many respects.
Read this as "Fury at plans to pedestrianise Oxford street." They seem to have got over it there.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
Claims are not outlandish by the standards of, let's say, what Denis Healey was planning for the 1979 to 83 Labour government. Indeed the biggest scare story is equality of CGT and income tax, last done by Nigel Lawson.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
The 22 billion is a hole of Reeves own making.
This Budget can't come soon enough. The endless speculation especially in right leaning media is getting ridiculous.
You simply havent adjusted to the Left being in government. The buck stops with you.
The right wing media didnt come up with the £22bn fiction. Rachel Reeves did, And when it first broke the PB Left were quite happily saying it was a good wheeze to get a big number out there so they could spend on what they like. Blaming a big pile of shit on the Tories was seen as a great idea as they could get way with it.
Then the wheeze went a bit awry - the WFA turned out to be firing at both feet with an AK47, the huge public sector payrises went down badly and have yet to play out in inflation and industrial unrest. The speculation on tax rises encouraged by Left wing outliers such as policy advisors. And then theres Ed Miliband a one man job destruction unit who will kill off the governments hopes for growth.
So if the government is quite openly making its own job harder why shouldnt the media comment ? Come October it may well be worse.
Faisal Islam @faisalislam · 30m Public funding for UK [In a Changing Europe] pulled - its analyses at junction of law, constitution, diplomacy and economics especially the Brexit players interview archives extremely helpful…
A hundred grand in freebies. Starmer doesn't appear to have broken any rules and it looks like he is meticulous in recording it all, but it looks fecking awful. He wants to go and watch the footie, get comped because he's Swifty, dress nicely and have designer specs, so he'll take a hundred grand in freebies from whoever wants to curry his favour. It stinks, and he needs to have a word with himself.
But…but…but… it’s too much to ask him to pay for his own tickets to football…
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
Tibet and South Vietnam say Hi!
Vietnam isn't a great comparison. Several years before the end to the war, most of the population in the South just wanted it to stop, irrespective of the terms. And but for Nixon's electoral ambitions, it would probably have done so.
A hundred grand in freebies. Starmer doesn't appear to have broken any rules and it looks like he is meticulous in recording it all, but it looks fecking awful. He wants to go and watch the footie, get comped because he's Swifty, dress nicely and have designer specs, so he'll take a hundred grand in freebies from whoever wants to curry his favour. It stinks, and he needs to have a word with himself.
But…but…but… it’s too much to ask him to pay for his own tickets to football…
Now he's a minister, he doesn't have to declare such gifts, so long as they're in his official capacity.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
Claims are not outlandish by the standards of, let's say, what Denis Healey was planning for the 1979 to 83 Labour government. Indeed the biggest scare story is equality of CGT and income tax, last done by Nigel Lawson.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
The 22 billion is a hole of Reeves own making.
This Budget can't come soon enough. The endless speculation especially in right leaning media is getting ridiculous.
If only our constitution allowed the party of government to fix the date of the budget.
If you campaign talking a lot about growth, then win, ditch investment, increase public sector pay, and have a vague and broad sentiment about hiking taxes on the private sector (except North Sea energy firms when it seems pretty specific) then obviously people are going to talk about that.
Labour could've avoided that by either being specific in the election campaign instead of their very cautious approach, or by emphasising growth in government as well as during the campaign. Instead they've just gone up to a blank blackboard, written TAX HIKES in big letters, underlined it, left it for 2 months and are grumpy some pesky pupils have started scrawling suggestions underneath it.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
And what gives the west the right to carve up a country and hand parcels out to imperialists?
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I'm pro-freedom, which includes the freedom for people to move countries if the country they live in makes their life less pleasant and they expect that a different country would give them a better life.
I've always been suspicious of appeals to patriotism, which have often been used by the wealthy to convince the poor to accept austerity "in the national interest".
I think it is worth noting that, for wealthy people who see themselves as British, their patriotism is often skin deep. If it doesn't even extend to paying taxes, then there's no chance it would ever have included fighting against Nazi invasion.
Obviously, from a practical point of view, the government needs to mollify such people to maximise tax revenue, but any such protestations of patriotism and loyalty by these people are so much codswallop.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
Claims are not outlandish by the standards of, let's say, what Denis Healey was planning for the 1979 to 83 Labour government. Indeed the biggest scare story is equality of CGT and income tax, last done by Nigel Lawson.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
The 22 billion is a hole of Reeves own making.
This Budget can't come soon enough. The endless speculation especially in right leaning media is getting ridiculous.
You simply havent adjusted to the Left being in government. The buck stops with you.
The right wing media didnt come up with the £22bn fiction. Rachel Reeves did, And when it first broke the PB Left were quite happily saying it was a good wheeze to get a big number out there so they could spend on what they like. Blaming a big pile of shit on the Tories was seen as a great idea as they could get way with it.
Then the wheeze went a bit awry - the WFA turned out to be firing at both feet with an AK47, the huge public sector payrises went down badly and have yet to play out in inflation and industrial unrest. The speculation on tax rises encouraged by Left wing outliers such as policy advisors. And then theres Ed Miliband a one man job destruction unit who will kill off the governments hopes for growth.
So if the government is quite openly making its own job harder why shouldnt the media comment ? Come October it may well be worse.
Nothing wrong with comment and debate but the sheer volume of it around tax is getting silly imho. The Telegraph especially seems to have about five pieces a day looking at a vast array of taxes that could go up because Torsten Bell once mentioned this one in the pub five years ago and then extrapolating what might happen if each one was whacked up to 11 and then finding a load of people who would leave the country or sell every rental if it happened.
I'm fully expecting "Landlords head to Beachy Head in droves" before end of October comes.
Notes on the Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street mentioned yesterday.
My photo quota is the delightful fury in the Daily Mail about it. Khaaaannnnn ! 4 articles in 24 hours no less. Possible exclusion of buses was discussed, and how that could limit access for some disabled. Exclusion of cycling is also discussed. There's a piece in road.cc linked below about it, and some interesting comments from transport type cyclists who would not have too much problem provided decent alternatives were provided.
It's going to be quite a prototype for other places, I think, with the parties in the conversation.
Background:
- One question is whether Oxford Street is sustainable as shopping.
- This proposal goes back to Mayor Khan's first manifesto in 2016.
- The 2016 scheme was afaics scuppered by the then Tory-controlled Westminster Borough, which is now controlled by Labour.
- The Labour Borough have a current set of proposals which has been out for discussion (plans have been online). Khan has blindsided them slightly, but they are talking about working together.
- There are various models around in London.
eg 1 Exhibition Road used shared-space values (ie don't protect pedestrians from motor vehicles, and remove designs which can be read by cane users, guide dogs etc) which are a imo always a disaster but were the design fashion in about 2006-2010. More used in Scotland aiui, and Visually Impaired hate them afaics. eg 2 The Aldwych is a motor-vehicle excluded except for access space aiui which is popular, but is not mainly retail, also aiui. eg 3 Kensington High Street, which has been returned by Borough of K&C to being a traffic sewer, having removed the mobility tracks. eg 4 A model used eg in central Nottingham where certain categories of cross traffic on side streets are allowed.
- Cycle traffic on Oxford Street ran at about 200 per hour at peak time in 2017, and similarly on parallel routes. No idea what current numbers are; trend would say 400-500 on a similar basis.
- There are issues bubbling under around categorisation of mobility aids eg clip-ons that turn a wheelchair into a hand-cycle but are not official "mobility aids" at this time, and relevant charities are engaged.
I've been trying to find the original proposal, by some architects, to *raise* Oxford Street. That is, they proposed, some years ago, to put a pedestrianised "roof" over the a major chunk of it. The idea was that, over time, the shops would evolve their facades to have opening at the new level - initially you'd go "downstairs" to enter a shop, as now.
It seemed an intriguing idea in many respects.
I don't see that having any more future than the London Ringways TBH. The closest I can think of in this country is perhaps the original vision for the area around the Barbican, but there aren't exactly a lot of roads placed underground there.
Has similar been a success in any city, anywhere, at any time, ever?
Meanwhile, we have models based around unravelling transport modes in older street patterns that have succeeded.
Israel reportedly fast-tracked its explosion of thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah fighters because the mass sabotage operation was about to be exposed.
It was a “use it or lose it moment,” a US official told Axios describing the reason Israel gave for the timing of the attack, which killed at least 11 and injured almost 3,000.
Two ounces of explosives were believed to have been hidden in 5,000 pagers next to a battery along with a switch to remotely trigger the device, US sources told The New York Times.
Israel reportedly fast-tracked its explosion of thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah fighters because the mass sabotage operation was about to be exposed.
It was a “use it or lose it moment,” a US official told Axios describing the reason Israel gave for the timing of the attack, which killed at least 11 and injured almost 3,000.
Two ounces of explosives were believed to have been hidden in 5,000 pagers next to a battery along with a switch to remotely trigger the device, US sources told The New York Times.
Torygraph
Owen Jones is distraught and says Israel has been very, very naughty.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
The problem with Russia/Ukraine is that, AIUI, a significant number of people who considered themselves Russian, and spoke Russian moved into, particularly, Eastern Ukraine during the Soviet era. These people, or at least a substantial percentage, may well prefer to stay with Russia. In that case the settlement described would simply be a case of legitimatisng the de facto situation.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I wonder how much this stuff will be defused when tax rates aren't raised anything like as much as suggested by the spleen-venting in the Mail and the Telegraph (if that turns out to be the case)?
(Edited to be polite)
So in this scenario reeves has scared off half the tax base by October and then forgoes even the temporary benefit of properly squeezing the remainder?
Masterstroke.
Is it really Reeves' fault if the Tory press has been making ever more outlandish claims and a bunch of basic money-obsessed South Kesington residents are throwing a wobbly? Or do you think she should have pre-briefed the entire Budget before even looking at the figures?
Claims are not outlandish by the standards of, let's say, what Denis Healey was planning for the 1979 to 83 Labour government. Indeed the biggest scare story is equality of CGT and income tax, last done by Nigel Lawson.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
The 22 billion is a hole of Reeves own making.
This Budget can't come soon enough. The endless speculation especially in right leaning media is getting ridiculous.
You simply havent adjusted to the Left being in government. The buck stops with you.
The right wing media didnt come up with the £22bn fiction. Rachel Reeves did, And when it first broke the PB Left were quite happily saying it was a good wheeze to get a big number out there so they could spend on what they like. Blaming a big pile of shit on the Tories was seen as a great idea as they could get way with it.
Then the wheeze went a bit awry - the WFA turned out to be firing at both feet with an AK47, the huge public sector payrises went down badly and have yet to play out in inflation and industrial unrest. The speculation on tax rises encouraged by Left wing outliers such as policy advisors. And then theres Ed Miliband a one man job destruction unit who will kill off the governments hopes for growth.
So if the government is quite openly making its own job harder why shouldnt the media comment ? Come October it may well be worse.
Nothing wrong with comment and debate but the sheer volume of it around tax is getting silly imho. The Telegraph especially seems to have about five pieces a day looking at a vast array of taxes that could go up because Torsten Bell once mentioned this one in the pub five years ago and then extrapolating what might happen if each one was whacked up to 11 and then finding a load of people who would leave the country or sell every rental if it happened.
I'm fully expecting "Landlords head to Beachy Head in droves" before end of October comes.
Deluded.
There seems to be this thing on the PB Left to deny anything coming from the other side. Starmer's freeloading was all wrong until it was suddenly in the Guardian - then automatically its correct.
The speculation you dont like could have been kill off if Reeves had called her budget this month, But instead she has stoked the fires of uncertainty and left herself exposed.
Pre- election I pointed out the Labour plan of omerta while the Tories impaled themselves was great as an election plan but told us nothing about what a new govt would be like. Turns out theyre as shit as the last lost.
Israel reportedly fast-tracked its explosion of thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah fighters because the mass sabotage operation was about to be exposed.
It was a “use it or lose it moment,” a US official told Axios describing the reason Israel gave for the timing of the attack, which killed at least 11 and injured almost 3,000.
Two ounces of explosives were believed to have been hidden in 5,000 pagers next to a battery along with a switch to remotely trigger the device, US sources told The New York Times.
Torygraph
Owen Jones is distraught and says Israel has been very, very naughty.
I’m sure he will be cheered up when he receives his new IPhone he won in a competition he can’t remember entering.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
The current tax system, which favours enterprise and entrepeneurship, is a major draw for investment and high skilled immigrants. If you whack up the CGT tax rates, then the country becomes less appealing and people will leave, it then loses high rate tax payers and get less CGT and also lose investment.
This is something I learned when I was 17 and doing A-level politics/economics. I thought it was something universally understood and culturally entrenched in the British system, but perhaps the current government are just in denial of it.
If the government want to switch to a different system, IE a north european social democratic model, it takes decades and generations to build up, and a lot of pain in the process; you cannot just switch over to it in one budget.
I didn’t think people had a problem with immigrants leaving. Or is that just poor immigrants?
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
This is definitely happening, especially among ‘non-doms’ such as people in Mrs Sunak’s position, who are moving their primary residence to places like the sandpit in anticipation of a tightening of the rules.
UAE is offering 10-year ‘golden visa’ opportunities to anyone with a salary of $100k or making an investment of $500k.
So we get to a point where Government policy is predicated on not "frightening" a tiny group of people who just happen to be very wealthy.
In any case, they could decide to up and move to Singapore or Dubai or wherever at any time anyway.
We know wealth buys speech and presumably those with money are seeking to influence Government policy via articles in CIty AM, the Mail and elsewhere.
From memory 1% pay 60% of the income tax. (A large number of them play football, who have unsuccessfully tried lots of ways to avoid basically being on PAYE).
While I agree with the idea that one shouldn’t make government policy based on not annoying a small handful of very wealthy people, but when the government policy comes across as specifically to screw them to the floor, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that they plan to change their own arrangements to suit that perception.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
And what gives the west the right to carve up a country and hand parcels out to imperialists?
The fact that Ukraine's survival depends on western aid - and that any settlement will need western guarantees if it is to be anything more than a piece of paper - means the west will be a party to any negotiations. That is unavoidable. But you're entirely right that it isn't our territory to hand over for our convenience.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
That's an interesting and surprising post.
What I would say is that it is very unfortunate that people don't feel able to express their views. There is a very obvious path that can be observed, on one day people are making really lucid and impressive comments, then they 'take a side' and the quality of their comments and discourse goes rapidly downhill, to the point where it just reiterates propoganda. I am saying this now because it is something that can often be clearly observed in comments on Russia/Ukraine.
There are certain topics wherefrom people on PB are "not allowed" to dissent.
And if they do then there is a pile on. Most notable as you say on Ukraine/Russia where any deviation from the Ukraine will be in Moscow by next Christmas/Easter/Start of the Grouse Shooting Season line was, and to an extent still is met by the classic PB "pile on" (analogous to being beaten around the head with dandelions, that said).
People on PB get it into their heads that there is a "right" way to look at the world. Trump is of course another and hence Nick's acuity in understanding the dynamics of him posting what he did.
It's disappointing that PB should be like this but there you go.
People are allowed to say what they like and I'm allowed to disagree with them.
You seem to be arguing I shouldn't reply to people when I disagree with them.
"People on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice"
"On your team" - that's a pretty vile lie. Vance is a thoroughgoing arsehole.
Yes but it is still a mic drop comeback. The VP debate might be fun, pitting Walz's folksiness against Vance's fact-free quick wits.
There is something viscerally unattractive about Vance which you don't see very often. A real icy fish. I wondered whether Trump had chosen him for this reason. Whatever Trumps failings there's a wit and personality in the background. Maybe in not wanting to be upstaged he went too far the other way.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I'm pro-freedom, which includes the freedom for people to move countries if the country they live in makes their life less pleasant and they expect that a different country would give them a better life.
I've always been suspicious of appeals to patriotism, which have often been used by the wealthy to convince the poor to accept austerity "in the national interest".
I think it is worth noting that, for wealthy people who see themselves as British, their patriotism is often skin deep. If it doesn't even extend to paying taxes, then there's no chance it would ever have included fighting against Nazi invasion.
Obviously, from a practical point of view, the government needs to mollify such people to maximise tax revenue, but any such protestations of patriotism and loyalty by these people are so much codswallop.
My maternal grandfather was notable for the MC he won in 1916 and for his monomaniacal dedication, on returning to civilian life, to the minimisation of his and his descendants' liability to all forms of tax.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
The problem with Russia/Ukraine is that, AIUI, a significant number of people who considered themselves Russian, and spoke Russian moved into, particularly, Eastern Ukraine during the Soviet era. These people, or at least a substantial percentage, may well prefer to stay with Russia. In that case the settlement described would simply be a case of legitimatisng the de facto situation.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
The current tax system, which favours enterprise and entrepeneurship, is a major draw for investment and high skilled immigrants. If you whack up the CGT tax rates, then the country becomes less appealing and people will leave, it then loses high rate tax payers and get less CGT and also lose investment.
This is something I learned when I was 17 and doing A-level politics/economics. I thought it was something universally understood and culturally entrenched in the British system, but perhaps the current government are just in denial of it.
If the government want to switch to a different system, IE a north european social democratic model, it takes decades and generations to build up, and a lot of pain in the process; you cannot just switch over to it in one budget.
I don't follow why someone who is employed in IT at a bank is so worried about CGT? Unless they are being paid in shares or are buying loads of shares then why are they facing it? If they have bought property (other than residential) out of their earnings then they could be hit, but, and its a big but, selling now and leaving now is too late. The sale will not go through in time for the October budget so any gain made to date will be hit at new rates.
Maybe I am missing something?
I would guess they have assets/investments? I think @kyf_100 has been complaining about similar things. The CGT rates are what - 20% max after allowances for a higher rate tax payer?. In other european countries they are closer to 40%. If you have a gain of say £100k it is a significant difference.
Notes on the Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street mentioned yesterday.
My photo quota is the delightful fury in the Daily Mail about it. Khaaaannnnn ! 4 articles in 24 hours no less. Possible exclusion of buses was discussed, and how that could limit access for some disabled. Exclusion of cycling is also discussed. There's a piece in road.cc linked below about it, and some interesting comments from transport type cyclists who would not have too much problem provided decent alternatives were provided.
It's going to be quite a prototype for other places, I think, with the parties in the conversation.
Background:
- One question is whether Oxford Street is sustainable as shopping.
- This proposal goes back to Mayor Khan's first manifesto in 2016.
- The 2016 scheme was afaics scuppered by the then Tory-controlled Westminster Borough, which is now controlled by Labour.
- The Labour Borough have a current set of proposals which has been out for discussion (plans have been online). Khan has blindsided them slightly, but they are talking about working together.
- There are various models around in London.
eg 1 Exhibition Road used shared-space values (ie don't protect pedestrians from motor vehicles, and remove designs which can be read by cane users, guide dogs etc) which are a imo always a disaster but were the design fashion in about 2006-2010. More used in Scotland aiui, and Visually Impaired hate them afaics. eg 2 The Aldwych is a motor-vehicle excluded except for access space aiui which is popular, but is not mainly retail, also aiui. eg 3 Kensington High Street, which has been returned by Borough of K&C to being a traffic sewer, having removed the mobility tracks. eg 4 A model used eg in central Nottingham where certain categories of cross traffic on side streets are allowed.
- Cycle traffic on Oxford Street ran at about 200 per hour at peak time in 2017, and similarly on parallel routes. No idea what current numbers are; trend would say 400-500 on a similar basis.
- There are issues bubbling under around categorisation of mobility aids eg clip-ons that turn a wheelchair into a hand-cycle but are not official "mobility aids" at this time, and relevant charities are engaged.
I've been trying to find the original proposal, by some architects, to *raise* Oxford Street. That is, they proposed, some years ago, to put a pedestrianised "roof" over the a major chunk of it. The idea was that, over time, the shops would evolve their facades to have opening at the new level - initially you'd go "downstairs" to enter a shop, as now.
It seemed an intriguing idea in many respects.
I don't see that having any more future than the London Ringways TBH. The closest I can think of in this country is perhaps the original vision for the area around the Barbican, but there aren't exactly a lot of roads placed underground there.
Has similar been a success in any city, anywhere, at any time, ever?
Meanwhile, we have models based around unravelling transport modes in older street patterns that have succeeded.
Digging the roads into the ground would be my preferred solution. But the idea of elevated pedestrian access is interesting. The Plus 15 in Calgary is fascinating to use.
The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AP924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.
The explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives.
At 3:30 p.m. in Lebanon, the pagers received a message that appeared as though it was coming from Hezbollah’s leadership, two of the officials said. Instead, the message activated the explosives. Lebanon’s health minister told state media at least nine people were killed and more than 2,800 injured.
The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to three of the officials.
Over 3,000 pagers were ordered from the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan, said several of the officials. Hezbollah distributed the pagers to their members throughout Lebanon, with some reaching Hezbollah allies in Iran and Syria. Israel’s attack affected the pagers that were switched on and receiving messages.
Seems Hezbollah operatives are very good at keeping their beepers charged up, unlike most teenagers with their cellphones.
So why does the Iranian ambassador have a communications device provided by a prescribed terrorist organisation?
Isn't he the Management?
The relationship between Hezbollah and Iran is very deep. Iran finances them to a very large extent and even dictates (to a considerable extent) their actions. You could say that Hezbollah is a subsidiary with a majority shareholding by Iran.
It is the very reverse of surprising that the Iranian ambassador was on their C&C network.
Just for the record, I was not surprised
Merely using the rhetorical device of asking naive questions to highlight the underlying point…
"People on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice"
"On your team" - that's a pretty vile lie. Vance is a thoroughgoing arsehole.
Yes but it is still a mic drop comeback. The VP debate might be fun, pitting Walz's folksiness against Vance's fact-free quick wits.
There is something viscerally unattractive about Vance which you don't see very often. A real icy fish. I wondered whether Trump had chosen him for this reason. Whatever Trumps failings there's a wit and personality in the background. Maybe in not wanting to be upstaged he went too far the other way.
Your post just drips of envy.
You hate the fact that my Scots Irish relatives can play the banjo with their 6 toes. A sad indictment on the jealousy and prejudice we encounter on PB.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
I'm pro-freedom, which includes the freedom for people to move countries if the country they live in makes their life less pleasant and they expect that a different country would give them a better life.
I've always been suspicious of appeals to patriotism, which have often been used by the wealthy to convince the poor to accept austerity "in the national interest".
I think it is worth noting that, for wealthy people who see themselves as British, their patriotism is often skin deep. If it doesn't even extend to paying taxes, then there's no chance it would ever have included fighting against Nazi invasion.
Obviously, from a practical point of view, the government needs to mollify such people to maximise tax revenue, but any such protestations of patriotism and loyalty by these people are so much codswallop.
The other thing about this is why it's important for the government to push policies that sustainable increase the incomes of the great number of people in the middle of the population who won't be moving anywhere.
The New Labour approach to the economy, of letting a tiny number of people get filthy rich that you then tax to provide public services to everyone else, doesn't work when the rich will move away from tax.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
The problem with Russia/Ukraine is that, AIUI, a significant number of people who considered themselves Russian, and spoke Russian moved into, particularly, Eastern Ukraine during the Soviet era. These people, or at least a substantial percentage, may well prefer to stay with Russia. In that case the settlement described would simply be a case of legitimatisng the de facto situation.
The Russian desire to put all their munitions in one easy-to-explode location is, to put it mildly, bizarre. In peace time maybe. But when you are the aggressor and have had time to put your stuff-go-boom into multiple minor caches, it rather smacks of overconfidence/stupidity...
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
The problem with Russia/Ukraine is that, AIUI, a significant number of people who considered themselves Russian, and spoke Russian moved into, particularly, Eastern Ukraine during the Soviet era. These people, or at least a substantial percentage, may well prefer to stay with Russia. In that case the settlement described would simply be a case of legitimatisng the de facto situation.
There was a poll in 1991 ie at independence, where all areas of Ukraine voted to stay in Ukraine.
For me, that is definitive.
The de facto situation is post much ethnic-cleansing.
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
That's an interesting and surprising post.
What I would say is that it is very unfortunate that people don't feel able to express their views. There is a very obvious path that can be observed, on one day people are making really lucid and impressive comments, then they 'take a side' and the quality of their comments and discourse goes rapidly downhill, to the point where it just reiterates propoganda. I am saying this now because it is something that can often be clearly observed in comments on Russia/Ukraine.
There are certain topics wherefrom people on PB are "not allowed" to dissent.
And if they do then there is a pile on. Most notable as you say on Ukraine/Russia where any deviation from the Ukraine will be in Moscow by next Christmas/Easter/Start of the Grouse Shooting Season line was, and to an extent still is met by the classic PB "pile on" (analogous to being beaten around the head with dandelions, that said).
People on PB get it into their heads that there is a "right" way to look at the world. Trump is of course another and hence Nick's acuity in understanding the dynamics of him posting what he did.
It's disappointing that PB should be like this but there you go.
People are allowed to say what they like and I'm allowed to disagree with them.
You seem to be arguing I shouldn't reply to people when I disagree with them.
Nothing so dramatic. But there are certain topics which bring out PB en masse against the poster. Ukraine/Russia then and now is a case in point.
Any analysis of the situation that didn't foresee a complete and utter Ukrainian victory was dismissed as being Putin's stooge and whatnot. It was a rare blind spot for PB because, as we are seeing with Trump now, all too often people were substituting what they thought should or wanted to happen, with what might happen. And why.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
I had a meeting yesterday with someone in that business who confirmed to me that enquiries pre election to the local gov arm who handle SHNW relocatirs were about 3 per month. They are currently 12 new per week.
I was also told of a number of Financial companies relocating key parts from London to here and it’s all down to the fear and feeling that Labour are going to screw them.
I’ve said it before - I’m not happy about this, doesn’t improve my life but diminishes the UK which I love.
This is corporate tax, spending with the VAT and jobs associated, stamp duties, staff etc etc going.
Labour's hatred of wealth is going to come up against its love of the NHS.
Wealthy people pay for the NHS.
There is also a further interesting point. I work in IT in bank. Of my team, I am the only one born in the UK. There is one, who is long term settled (married to local, house etc). The others are 1st generation immigrants who have been in the country 3-5 years.
The other day, when we were discussing tax, someone was saying that if CGT was put up substantially, then exiting the country and living abroad for a period of time was in his financial interest. Which led people to accuse that person of being "transactional" and that, if he had that attitude, then leave and good riddance.
The recent immigrant members of the team have started discussing moving (in the bank) to another country or leaving for another country. The reason - concern over future tax rates. Is this transactional? Is it just to be expected? After all, they have lived nearly their entire lives in China, India etc. etc. While they are currently putting down roots - even studying for the citizenship test and spending money on the naturalisation process - they are very shallow roots.
In short - a portion of the highly skilled workforce has very little social and emotional connection to this country. Their "personal cost of changing countries" is quite low. In the case of the bank, they have been told that they can move to any other bank office in the world - we have partial WFH and the team is already split between countries...
The current tax system, which favours enterprise and entrepeneurship, is a major draw for investment and high skilled immigrants. If you whack up the CGT tax rates, then the country becomes less appealing and people will leave, it then loses high rate tax payers and get less CGT and also lose investment.
This is something I learned when I was 17 and doing A-level politics/economics. I thought it was something universally understood and culturally entrenched in the British system, but perhaps the current government are just in denial of it.
If the government want to switch to a different system, IE a north european social democratic model, it takes decades and generations to build up, and a lot of pain in the process; you cannot just switch over to it in one budget.
I don't follow why someone who is employed in IT at a bank is so worried about CGT? Unless they are being paid in shares or are buying loads of shares then why are they facing it? If they have bought property (other than residential) out of their earnings then they could be hit, but, and its a big but, selling now and leaving now is too late. The sale will not go through in time for the October budget so any gain made to date will be hit at new rates.
Maybe I am missing something?
The assumption, on their part, is that other taxes will go up as well. Combined with questions about buying a flat in London, or not.
They are generally investing quite a bit of their income in preparation to buy, if they haven't already.
To them, the marginal cost of moving countries is very low - socially and financially. Why shouldn't they think about it as a lesser issue - less than someone, born here, moving towns?
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
The problem with Russia/Ukraine is that, AIUI, a significant number of people who considered themselves Russian, and spoke Russian moved into, particularly, Eastern Ukraine during the Soviet era. These people, or at least a substantial percentage, may well prefer to stay with Russia. In that case the settlement described would simply be a case of legitimatisng the de facto situation.
Marcelo Goulart, of the Zurich-based wealth advisor First Alliance, has been so busy helping clients leave the UK that he’s had no summer holiday. He tells @CityAM that 80 per cent of his “UK exposed” clients have either left the country or are in the final stages of doing so.
This is definitely happening, especially among ‘non-doms’ such as people in Mrs Sunak’s position, who are moving their primary residence to places like the sandpit in anticipation of a tightening of the rules.
UAE is offering 10-year ‘golden visa’ opportunities to anyone with a salary of $100k or making an investment of $500k.
So we get to a point where Government policy is predicated on not "frightening" a tiny group of people who just happen to be very wealthy.
In any case, they could decide to up and move to Singapore or Dubai or wherever at any time anyway.
We know wealth buys speech and presumably those with money are seeking to influence Government policy via articles in CIty AM, the Mail and elsewhere.
From memory 1% pay 60% of the income tax. (A large number of them play football, who have unsuccessfully tried lots of ways to avoid basically being on PAYE).
While I agree with the idea that one shouldn’t make government policy based on not annoying a small handful of very wealthy people, but when the government policy comes across as specifically to screw them to the floor, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that they plan to change their own arrangements to suit that perception.
IFS say 29% not 60%. in March this year That's higher than I expected, though - I had a number of ~27% in my head.
Someone just about in the top 1 per cent of income tax payers, on £200,000, say, will be paying a good £10,000 a year more than in 2009. Our reliance on top earners has continued to grow. That top 1 per cent pay 29 per cent of all income tax now, up from 25 per cent in 2010 and 21 per cent at the turn of the century. Whisper it quietly, but this Tory government has taken a serious chunk out of the incomes of the 1 per cent. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/how-tax-burden-high-when-most-us-are-taxed-so-low
I have been thinking carefully about 'why would someone sane vote for Trump'. I think the argument is as follows. The democrats are trading on familiarity, ie they represent the continuation of an existing, stable order. But the order they are presiding over is failing. It trades on a kind of 'familiarity bias'. But they have very weak answers to existential problems: AI, the rise of china, foreign wars. All this may be just about tolerable, if you think that business as usual can be maintained and that the alternative is worse. But actually, there are many signs that the institutional order that prevails within the 'liberal establishment' and perpetuates the current system is itself deeply unstable. The most obvious structural problem is the gradual replacement of competent and experienced people who are retiring and replaced by those leaving university who are on the left and are becoming more and more radical in outlook, reflecting the last 10 years of change in higher education. Under this influence, the next democrat administration and the state institutions are likely to struggle severely and existentially with questions like Israel/ Palestine, border control, controlling illegal immigration, the arms race with China, and so on - whilst also dealing with massive internal domestic opposition - and to such a degree that there is a risk of rapid collapse, in a similar way to that which occurred in the soviet union 40 years ago.
Most people posting on this website will respond to the above by saying it is rubbish, there is no problem in the universities, it is based on generational anxieties and fears about change etc. In the end that just represents a different analysis and there are some persuasive arguments in favour of this perspective. But I would just say that it doesn't help your cause by resorting to insults towards people who have a different view.
People like Elon Musk have clearly thought very carefully about their position, and I think it is based on something like the analysis above. The system is collapsing, the collapse has to be disrupted, and Trump - for all the many dangers and flaws - is the only option going.
It's a persuasive analysis. But in addition, some people mainly care about one issue, on which Trump may be closer to their viewpoint, whether it's abortion, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, or whatever.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
This position is in at least some parts shared by roughly nobody, so I'm tempted not even to express it in the relatively friendly confines of PB. My point, though, is that everyone has their own priorities which opinion polls struggle to represent. My betting position is strongly pro-Democrat as it seems to me that Harris should be clear favourite at this point. But I'm uneasily aware that there are cross-currents under the surface which few of us fully understand.
It has been a foundation stone of international relations for centuries to oppose wars of conquest that lead to border changes, because otherwise you encourage more war.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
The problem with Russia/Ukraine is that, AIUI, a significant number of people who considered themselves Russian, and spoke Russian moved into, particularly, Eastern Ukraine during the Soviet era. These people, or at least a substantial percentage, may well prefer to stay with Russia. In that case the settlement described would simply be a case of legitimatisng the de facto situation.
There was a poll in 1991 ie at independence, where all areas of Ukraine voted to stay in Ukraine.
For me, that is definitive.
The de facto situation is post much ethnic-cleansing.
Thanks. Agree, if that's the way they voted, that's what should happen. Do you have a reference, please; what were the figures in the east?
I am guessing investigative journalists are looking for generous Labour donors with CGT liable transactions completing about now, for which a September budget would have been problematic.
Personally I feel our pro-Ukraine position rejecting an inch of boundary change is exagerrated and dangerous, and we should be encouraging peace talks involving the east being merged into Russia and the West merged into the west, including NATO. I have no influence over the outcome, so it doesn't matter what I think, but if I actually had a vote I'd be tempted to vote for Trump - except that he's clearly bonkers on almost every other issue, so I suppose I'd vote Democrat.
I doubt DJT has the attention span and organisational capability to alter, in any material sense beyond messaging, US policy on Ukraine.
Of course he does. All it would require is the cessation of US aid. A GOP majority in Congress would probably sort that out for him.
Most GOP Senators hate Putin unlike Trump and GOP House representatives. In 2012 now Senator Romney was harder line on Putin than Obama
And the House of Representatives, which holds the purse strings, repeatedly blocked aid. It would be extremely easy for Trump as president to stop all further aid, even that already funded, if he was determined to do so.
Perhaps but on current polls a GOP Senate looks more likely than a GOP House and Trump returning as President. The Senate also has to approve treaties with other nations
Comments
I note that, to date, no one has come up with a better plan, than mine, to solve Israel/Palestine.
Masterstroke.
The GOP under Trump has certainly pushed that about as far as it will go.
But the dynamic is a little different from 2016. Trump has a record in government, which really wasn't all that great; he actually didn't accomplish any of the things he promised last time round.
Fun series, though.
Desperate people will reach for desperate measures, or even simply destructive ones. Bad change is at least change.
I do not think that the analysis that the US is heading towards inevitable collapse due to woke graduates stands up to any scrutiny. The extreme motivated woke are a small minority, and while many people may go along with it to an extent, generally I'd expect the extreme to be tempered by the majority.
Secondly, Trump is extremely damaging to the basic institutions and norms of a democracy, and is essentially a self-interested grifter with a God complex.
Michael Collins said of the Treaty with Britain that:
"In my opinion it gives us freedom, not the ultimate freedom that all nations desire and develop to, but the freedom to achieve it."
In a similar way, the basic institutions and norms of democracy do not guarantee health, wealth and happiness for all, but they do provide the means to achieve those things if used competently by the people and leaders of a country.
Trump would destroy all that and he would preclude the achievement of any positive end. I'll go further and say that his presence as a serious contender in the election acts to prevent any meaningful debate and scrutiny of the Democrats by a different party with different ideas about how to achieve health, wealth and happiness. And since I believe it is open debate, that above all else, is the fundamental building block of democracy, which leads to bad ideas being discarded, and better ideas being adopted, I do not think significant positive change in the US can occur until Trump is defeated and an opposition to the Democrats emerges that respects democracy and the rule of law, and isn't dominated by the self-interest and egomania of an individual.
For that reason, any reasonable person must conclude that Trump has to be defeated to defend democracy, and any chance of constructively challenging the status quo in the future. Any other conclusion is, in my opinion, seriously in error.
But, of course, people frequently make mistakes, including myself.
This rabbit hole has brought me to the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bodkin_Adams btw. Fascinating and hard to reconcile with the well established fact that the courts always get it right, do you hear? in medical murder trials.
Yes, the same "British Jobs for British Workers" Gordon Brown.
And if they do then there is a pile on. Most notable as you say on Ukraine/Russia where any deviation from the Ukraine will be in Moscow by next Christmas/Easter/Start of the Grouse Shooting Season line was, and to an extent still is met by the classic PB "pile on" (analogous to being beaten around the head with dandelions, that said).
People on PB get it into their heads that there is a "right" way to look at the world. Trump is of course another and hence Nick's acuity in understanding the dynamics of him posting what he did.
It's disappointing that PB should be like this but there you go.
If you campaign talking a lot about growth, then win, ditch investment, increase public sector pay, and have a vague and broad sentiment about hiking taxes on the private sector (except North Sea energy firms when it seems pretty specific) then obviously people are going to talk about that.
Labour could've avoided that by either being specific in the election campaign instead of their very cautious approach, or by emphasising growth in government as well as during the campaign. Instead they've just gone up to a blank blackboard, written TAX HIKES in big letters, underlined it, left it for 2 months and are grumpy some pesky pupils have started scrawling suggestions underneath it.
On the Ukraine, you may be surprised to hear I don't wholly disagree but being the good liberal internationalist I am, the decision should sit with the people not the leaders.
I'll start with an obvious - most of the world (apart from the Russians and the Ukrainians doing the fighting and dying) has adapted pretty well to the conflict. Life goes on and indeed there's plenty of money to be made by arms manufacturers and others and it has given a boost to the arguments of the defence establishment it should get more Government money rather than less. The "rules" seem to have been set and as along as everyone stays within them we can all get along (apart from the aforementioned Russians and Ukrainians).
If I could stop the fighting in 24 hours (pace Trump), I would propose a withdrawal of all forces to pre-2022 borders and original inhabitants allowed to return. A UN peacekeeping force (a nice little earner for Brazil, Nigeria and India) to patrol the Donetsk and Lukhansk areas and in six months (180 days from any ceasefire) a referendum to be held which has two options either a) part of Ukraine or b) part of Russia and all parties to abide by said outcome.
For Crimea, a similar referendum but with three options a) Ukraine b) Russia c) an Independent state whose independence would be guaranteed by Russia, Ukraine and NATO.
And it is certainly worth discussing what a stable pace settlement might require, as we've had a couple which weren't at all stable.
In any case, they could decide to up and move to Singapore or Dubai or wherever at any time anyway.
We know wealth buys speech and presumably those with money are seeking to influence Government policy via articles in CIty AM, the Mail and elsewhere.
Incidentally, "Press Conference" or variations on that does not appear in the document I found (linked above). Which is why I was asking if it is the right one.
Your analysis is broadly correct, but Trump is not the answer
This is something I learned when I was 17 and doing A-level politics/economics. I thought it was something universally understood and culturally entrenched in the British system, but perhaps the current government are just in denial of it.
If the government want to switch to a different system, IE a north european social democratic model, it takes decades and generations to build up, and a lot of pain in the process; you cannot just switch over to it in one budget.
We are in an unnecessary limbo. A 22bn black hole is an emergency and justifies an emergency budget, and there's a precedent on 22 June 2010, six weeks into a new government. Even counting from Rachel's big reveal about the black hole on 29 July the budget should be a fortnight behind us now, with most of the fatcat ship-leavers still here. Is she slow of thinking and not terribly good at sums or what?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6399457.stm
The chancellor told an audience in London that obliging migrants to carry out community work would help introduce them to the people they will be living alongside and would show they could contribute to society.
My personal view is 25p basic rate and 50p higher rate is the way forward - pain, yes, no question but we are £80-90 billion in the aforementioned hole and while I'd like to see something serious on land value taxation (as well as property value taxation), we need to have all options available.
There's also the not inconsiderable amount of debt interest we have to pay though with interest rates on the way down, that becomes less of an issue.
We absolutely have to oppose formal recognition of Russian acquisition of any Ukrainian territory by conquest, or we give them green light to any other country that fancies a chunk of its neighbours.
Even if we end up acquiescing to a de facto conquest of parts of Ukraine by Russia, legitimising that conquest formally by recognising the new borders would be an epoch-defining mistake.
*Traditional after WWI. Previous to that, making anything secret was considered a bit outlandish.
My photo quota is the delightfully inchoate-but-powerless fury in the Daily Mail about it. Khaaaannnnn ! 4 articles in 24 hours no less.
Possible exclusion of buses was discussed, and how that could limit access for some disabled. Exclusion of cycling is also up for discussion in the scheme. There's a piece in road.cc linked below about it, and some interesting comments from transport type cyclists who would not have too much problem if decent alternatives were provided.
It's going to be quite a prototype for other places, I think, with the parties in the conversation. Charities such as Wheels for Wellbeing are engaged, as I expect will RNIB etc and the various fringe groups such as NFBUK who feed videos to the tabloids.
Background:
- One question is whether Oxford Street is sustainable as shopping.
- This proposal goes back to Mayor Khan's first manifesto in 2016.
- The 2016 scheme was afaics scuppered by the then Tory-controlled Westminster Borough, which is now controlled by Labour.
- The Labour Borough have a current set of proposals which has been out for discussion (plans have been online). Khan has blindsided them slightly, but they are talking about working together.
- There are various models around in London.
eg 1 Exhibition Road used shared-space values (ie don't protect pedestrians from motor vehicles, and remove designs which can be read by cane users, guide dogs etc) which are a imo always a disaster but were the design fashion in about 2006-2010. More used in Scotland aiui, and Visually Impaired hate them afaics.
eg 2 The Aldwych is a motor-vehicle excluded except for access space aiui which is popular, but is not mainly retail, also aiui.
eg 3 Kensington High Street, which has been returned by Borough of K&C to being a traffic sewer, having removed the mobility tracks.
eg 4 A model used eg in central Nottingham where certain categories of cross traffic on side streets are allowed.
- Cycle traffic on Oxford Street ran at about 200 per hour at peak time in 2017, and similarly on parallel routes. No idea what current numbers are; trend would say 400-500 on a similar basis.
- There are issues bubbling under around categorisation of mobility aids eg clip-ons that turn a wheelchair into a hand-cycle but are not official "mobility aids" at this time, and relevant charities are engaged.
Road.cc article
- https://road.cc/content/news/cyclists-be-banned-oxford-street-during-daytime-310387
Road.cc article from 2017
- https://road.cc/content/news/231918-proposed-oxford-street-cycling-ban-“disaster-cycling-london”-says-andrew#comments
It seemed an intriguing idea in many respects.
Maybe I am missing something?
I recall one correspondent who got very upset with the CNN poll, on the eve of the invasion, which showed that no bits of Ukraine wanted to be bits of Russia.
There is NOTHING coming. Just more grift, more books, more TV shows, more bullshit. And you are being played if you think that genuine disclosure of Alien life making contact is coming.
The right wing media didnt come up with the £22bn fiction. Rachel Reeves did, And when it first broke the PB Left were quite happily saying it was a good wheeze to get a big number out there so they could spend on what they like. Blaming a big pile of shit on the Tories was seen as a great idea as they could get way with it.
Then the wheeze went a bit awry - the WFA turned out to be firing at both feet with an AK47, the huge public sector payrises went down badly and have yet to play out in inflation and industrial unrest. The speculation on tax rises encouraged by Left wing outliers such as policy advisors. And then theres Ed Miliband a one man job destruction unit who will kill off the governments hopes for growth.
So if the government is quite openly making its own job harder why shouldnt the media comment ? Come October it may well be worse.
@faisalislam
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30m
Public funding for UK [In a Changing Europe] pulled - its analyses at junction of law, constitution, diplomacy and economics especially the Brexit players interview archives extremely helpful…
Anand Menon
@anandMenon1
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1h
End of an era. Gutted to have to announce this today. Proud of what
@UKandEU
has achieved and very grateful to all those who have worked with us https://ukandeu.ac.uk/announcement/statement/
Several years before the end to the war, most of the population in the South just wanted it to stop, irrespective of the terms. And but for Nixon's electoral ambitions, it would probably have done so.
S Korea is a slightly (but not much) better one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqhdn2WL7eA
I've always been suspicious of appeals to patriotism, which have often been used by the wealthy to convince the poor to accept austerity "in the national interest".
I think it is worth noting that, for wealthy people who see themselves as British, their patriotism is often skin deep. If it doesn't even extend to paying taxes, then there's no chance it would ever have included fighting against Nazi invasion.
Obviously, from a practical point of view, the government needs to mollify such people to maximise tax revenue, but any such protestations of patriotism and loyalty by these people are so much codswallop.
I'm fully expecting "Landlords head to Beachy Head in droves" before end of October comes.
Has similar been a success in any city, anywhere, at any time, ever?
Meanwhile, we have models based around unravelling transport modes in older street patterns that have succeeded.
It was a “use it or lose it moment,” a US official told Axios describing the reason Israel gave for the timing of the attack, which killed at least 11 and injured almost 3,000.
Two ounces of explosives were believed to have been hidden in 5,000 pagers next to a battery along with a switch to remotely trigger the device, US sources told The New York Times.
Torygraph
In that case the settlement described would simply be a case of legitimatisng the de facto situation.
There seems to be this thing on the PB Left to deny anything coming from the other side. Starmer's freeloading was all wrong until it was suddenly in the Guardian - then automatically its correct.
The speculation you dont like could have been kill off if Reeves had called her budget this month, But instead she has stoked the fires of uncertainty and left herself exposed.
Pre- election I pointed out the Labour plan of omerta while the Tories impaled themselves was great as an election plan but told us nothing about what a new govt would be like. Turns out theyre as shit as the last lost.
https://x.com/clashreport/status/1836270948246261860
While I agree with the idea that one shouldn’t make government policy based on not annoying a small handful of very wealthy people, but when the government policy comes across as specifically to screw them to the floor, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that they plan to change their own arrangements to suit that perception.
But you're entirely right that it isn't our territory to hand over for our convenience.
You seem to be arguing I shouldn't reply to people when I disagree with them.
Note the date.
The CGT rates are what - 20% max after allowances for a higher rate tax payer?. In other european countries they are closer to 40%.
If you have a gain of say £100k it is a significant difference.
Merely using the rhetorical device of asking naive questions to highlight the underlying point…
You hate the fact that my Scots Irish relatives can play the banjo with their 6 toes. A sad indictment on the jealousy and prejudice we encounter on PB.
The New Labour approach to the economy, of letting a tiny number of people get filthy rich that you then tax to provide public services to everyone else, doesn't work when the rich will move away from tax.
You have to expand the tax base.
Or had.
For me, that is definitive.
The de facto situation is post much ethnic-cleansing.
Any analysis of the situation that didn't foresee a complete and utter Ukrainian victory was dismissed as being Putin's stooge and whatnot. It was a rare blind spot for PB because, as we are seeing with Trump now, all too often people were substituting what they thought should or wanted to happen, with what might happen. And why.
They are generally investing quite a bit of their income in preparation to buy, if they haven't already.
To them, the marginal cost of moving countries is very low - socially and financially. Why shouldn't they think about it as a lesser issue - less than someone, born here, moving towns?
Someone just about in the top 1 per cent of income tax payers, on £200,000, say, will be paying a good £10,000 a year more than in 2009. Our reliance on top earners has continued to grow. That top 1 per cent pay 29 per cent of all income tax now, up from 25 per cent in 2010 and 21 per cent at the turn of the century. Whisper it quietly, but this Tory government has taken a serious chunk out of the incomes of the 1 per cent.
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/how-tax-burden-high-when-most-us-are-taxed-so-low