I see the Techne poll has got one or two a little over-excited because it dares to show a decent position for the Government.
First comment, we can probably forget all the pre-election polls and comparisons with them will be meaningless. Sampling, weighting and other methodologies have been reviewed by all pollsters since the election and the big miss on the Labour vote share (I think down to not properly sampling the anti-Labour Independent vote and a significantly greater level of Labour abstention than anticipated given it seemed the election was already won - shades of 2001).
Second, we have a 4% disparity between Techne and More In Common despite fieldwork across the same period and that explains a four point lead against a twelve point lead.
Third, looking at the Techne numbers (such as they are), I'm struck by 28% Won't Vote which suggests the days of 80% turnouts in GE may be over for now. Labour lead across all age groups (slightly surprising). and the gender gap isn't that great.
Labour will take some comfort from that even those the local by-elections were far less satisfying for the party with losses to the Conservatives and LDs though in Huntingdon the Conservatives ended up third in a seat they held.
I suspect the Sundays will have a spread of troughing stories.
Sky got the bit between their teeth yesterday and had an exposure of "gifts". Starmer was top dog but the surprise to me was Lucy Powell who got through£40k and claimed the number 2 spot.
This reminds me a bit of MPs expenses and I suspect it will run. And before the Tories and LDs get too full of glee the expenses story dragged everyone in to the spotlight.
The expenses row was a net positive for the Lib Dems. They had a couple of MPs implicated (recall they had 60-odd MPs back then) but proportionally far fewer than the 2 main parties so they came out smelling if not of roses then certainly not of dogshit like the others. The good thing is this time we had so few MPs in the last parliament and no donors would have bothered paying much attention to Lib Dems that we're hopefully coming out of this nice and clean.
Sunak whatever his faults was too rich to bother with this, Truss too fleeting, and Johnson was a trougher like the sun rises in the east but that's ancient history. Labour may be differentially exposed on this.
Truss was not too fleeting - she had a long career as a senior minister before she rose to being PM. The record is quite clear, she took minimal freebies including some free tickets to Porgy and Bess and a couple of other things. Starmer had his snout well into the trough before he even won the election.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
I think the conclusion is correct. It is not fatal. They can recover. But will they.
"This is not a fatal moment for Sir Keir’s prime ministership. But it is a failure from which it is vital that Sir Keir should learn. He needs a stronger commitment to standards, effectively and independently enforced, so that politics and government can begin to be trusted again. That is not happening at the moment. But it is indispensable. Without it, the risks facing Labour in government will only continue to grow."
Starmer has shown himself able to learn lessons in the past but learning this one involves making personal sacrifices. I get being an addicted fan of a football team, I am one, but he is the PM. Maybe the solution is just not to go to matches. And he can clearly afford to buy his own glasses.
With a few exceptions this site is full of people utterly clueless about football & supporters.
He's had a season ticket for at least 18 years. He takes his kid, probably knows the people sitting nearby. The idea posted by someone that a couple of burly constables should sit either side is laughable as a security measure.
So far in the last couple of months we have had people suggesting he shouldn't have Shabbat dinner at home with his family & now can't go to a match.
Even politicians need a life.
The glasses, clothes etc is inexusable.
Tosser, you obviously have no principles or morals and happy that politicians engage in shafting teh public and cocking a snout at the plebs. You are not one of teh exceptions then , how many football fans that have bought season tickets for countless years get handed free private boxes smart arse.
Only the most aching of simpletons would have no concept of the security arrangements required for a PM
Every second out of Downing Street will require a risk assessment. Among the highest risk will be when you are a static target in a very public environment at a known time.
I've seen Rishi Sunak in a tiny village in North Yorkshire with his family on a quite Sunday. Two close protection officers were within 10 metres. Probably more close by.
Margaret Thatcher had close protection 24/7 for the 23 years after she left office.
How many football fans require this level of security "smart arse" ?
He's the fucking PM, he needs to decide what's more important. Going to football to see his "beloved" Arsenal for free and trousering over a hundred grand in freebies, which then paints him as a grifter and lose all credibility, or he wants to taken seriously as the Labour PM that came into power to sort out the country after 14 years of the Tory clownshow, including cutting the WFA for many pensioners. Currently, he looks like he likes the trough more than the country.
But John Major going to Lords to watch cricket or Stamford Bridge to watch the footbal was presumably fine.
It's the West Stand in (or very near) Directors seating.
That's what I wondered - I presume the Chelsea Pensioners in the shot were getting some kind of freebie?
I'm not a Chelsea supporter but I understand there are (or used to be) 4 tickets for Chelsea Pensioners for every home match. They also get tickets for at least one of the days for Wimbledon, maybe more I don't know. Probably a few freebies at Lords.
I don't imagine anyone begrudges them (but you never know) and it adds to the colour / tradition of any sporting occasion. Probably a fatwa issued for dissing them - like not wearing a poppy.
So Labour have actually plunged SEVEN points in 10 weeks. Given that Techne seem to wildly overstate Labour (40% on election day??) then Labour in reality might be down in the 20s
Have they changed their methodology?
I’ve no idea. Have you? They’ve not mentioned it on their TwiX feed
Given how badly they called the election one is tempted to ignore them entirely whatever they say
Yes they have. From their methodology small print,
The planned sample is represented by 1500 interviews, plus 124 over-sampling. The choice of over-sampling was based on the need to have a consistent number of cases in each weighting cell represented by the stratification between region or country and voting behavior in 2024 general elections.
That's a change to their baseline, not the methodology. They don't seem to have done anything about the big Labour bias or at least it isn't mentioned.
Not only that their massive Labour bias is incredible
Their poll on election day had an enormous sample. 5,300 people. It should have been hugely accurate
Yet it coughed up a Labour result of 40 not the 33.7 Labour finally got. Wildly wrong
Moreover - as OGH always told us - all that counts is movements between polls from the same pollsters
The poll that pb lefties were exultantly citing an hour ago actually shows Labour in free fall
A large sample improves the precision of a poll, but not its accuracy. So their large sample just meant they were more precisely wrong.
The largest errors from opinion polls are not due to random sampling errors, but due to systematic biases on foot of high non-response rates.
Why does anyone respond to opinion poll questions? What is their motive? How honest would their response be? I gather from occasional comments on here that YouGov pays a fraction of a penny for each interaction. Does this mean their sample is desperately poor? What about the others? How many questionnaires would I need to fill in, more or less truthfully, to pay the central heating bill?
YouGov pays you in "points", worth a penny each. They've just offered me a survey taking about 20 minutes (their estimate; they often over-estimate) for which I would get 50 points, so 50p. This is way below minimum wage. General election questions are usually part of a longer survey, a few questions at the end. Once you've amassed 5000 points, you can cash that in for £50. There isn't an endless supply of surveys, however. At most, you'll be doing a few a week through YouGov... although you can sign up to other companies, so you could probably get up to a few per day.
The financial gain is low. I think the people who do it do it because they quite like completing surveys. The money is a nice extra.
It is a hugely important question as to why people do these surveys and how representative they are of the general population. The government uses these sorts of surveys to track behaviour during COVID-19. I was on the team analysing the data. We want to know whether 26% of survey participants saying something means 26% of the general population or not, the same problems as the election pollsters have.
When they started out and were keen to expand their panel, you could rely on a regular flow of surveys and if you did them all could get £50 several times a year. Nowadays I think they have more panellists than they really need (except for the MRP) - particularly I’d guess in the PB demographic of mostly old farts with too much time on our hands - and a survey only comes along relatively rarely, such that it takes a couple of years to achieve the £50.
You’re right that there’s likely bias in the sort of people who do the surveys reliably. But of course their core panel is big enough that they’re effectively constructing a bespoke, chosen sample for each survey, based on the huge amount of data they already have on us.
Yes, they're doing quota sampling to match samples to demographic profiles, and some commercial surveys are highly targeted to people working in particular fields, etc. But quota sampling can't undo a systematic bias in the type of person interested in doing online surveys. For example, we've found, and this isn't very surprising, that online respondents tend to be more technologically literate than the general public.
True. But they can stratify their panellists into those that do surveys reliably, occasionally, and hardly ever, and construct survey mailing lists to contact a lot more of the latter two groups, and weight the replies they get according to which category people fall into. Indeed, one of the questions they’ve asked us is how often we want to do surveys, so they already have respondent data indicating how keen people are, and can use that to stratify or include/exclude.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
I reckon the polling before GE 24 wasn't as far off as people make out, with Labour in the early 40s. But come July 4th, everybody knew Labour were going to win. So, at the last minute, quite a lot of those who intended to vote Labour to get rid of the Tories didn't (including members of my own family). Instead, they went Green, Lib Dem, Independent, or just didn't bother voting. Result: Labour at 33%.
And RefUK, or there was an error on the balance between the ConRef v LLG aggregates.
LLG ended up at 54.1% which was definitely low compared to the polling.
EDIT: 162 calls later and the phone line is officially closed. Was it even ever open? Did anyone get through?
Thank God I didn't listen to @Anabobazina and get rid of my cheque book. Imagine seeing a house purchase fall through for lack of a cheque book?
I think the conclusion is correct. It is not fatal. They can recover. But will they.
"This is not a fatal moment for Sir Keir’s prime ministership. But it is a failure from which it is vital that Sir Keir should learn. He needs a stronger commitment to standards, effectively and independently enforced, so that politics and government can begin to be trusted again. That is not happening at the moment. But it is indispensable. Without it, the risks facing Labour in government will only continue to grow."
Starmer has shown himself able to learn lessons in the past but learning this one involves making personal sacrifices. I get being an addicted fan of a football team, I am one, but he is the PM. Maybe the solution is just not to go to matches. And he can clearly afford to buy his own glasses.
With a few exceptions this site is full of people utterly clueless about football & supporters.
He's had a season ticket for at least 18 years. He takes his kid, probably knows the people sitting nearby. The idea posted by someone that a couple of burly constables should sit either side is laughable as a security measure.
So far in the last couple of months we have had people suggesting he shouldn't have Shabbat dinner at home with his family & now can't go to a match.
Even politicians need a life.
The glasses, clothes etc is inexusable.
Tosser, you obviously have no principles or morals and happy that politicians engage in shafting teh public and cocking a snout at the plebs. You are not one of teh exceptions then , how many football fans that have bought season tickets for countless years get handed free private boxes smart arse.
Only the most aching of simpletons would have no concept of the security arrangements required for a PM
Every second out of Downing Street will require a risk assessment. Among the highest risk will be when you are a static target in a very public environment at a known time.
I've seen Rishi Sunak in a tiny village in North Yorkshire with his family on a quite Sunday. Two close protection officers were within 10 metres. Probably more close by.
Margaret Thatcher had close protection 24/7 for the 23 years after she left office.
How many football fans require this level of security "smart arse" ?
He's the fucking PM, he needs to decide what's more important. Going to football to see his "beloved" Arsenal for free and trousering over a hundred grand in freebies, which then paints him as a grifter and lose all credibility, or he wants to taken seriously as the Labour PM that came into power to sort out the country after 14 years of the Tory clownshow, including cutting the WFA for many pensioners. Currently, he looks like he likes the trough more than the country.
But John Major going to Lords to watch cricket or Stamford Bridge to watch the footbal was presumably fine.
It's the West Stand in (or very near) Directors seating.
That's what I wondered - I presume the Chelsea Pensioners in the shot were getting some kind of freebie?
A Chelsea Pensioner uniform is a free ticket to a number of London venues, including the Lord's pavilion on county days. Now I'm old enough to pass muster I'd be sorely tempted but it's probably a criminal offence to get dolled up like that without authority. Not sure I'd want to travel on the tube, either.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Andy Bruce @BruceReuters 💥 Biggest September drop for consumer confidence since 1976 👇
Survey company @GfK links this to messaging around the Budget and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Quite a serious charge - the idea that the government is risking a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom.
As I said yesterday, the amount of doom and gloom coming from the new government is going to result in big reduction in growth for the end of this year and the start of next year. Companies are looking at all of the uncertainty surrounding the UK and battening down the hatches, balance sheets are being solidified with investment being cut to achieve that. What's completely crazy about this is that there was no need for any of it, the Tories handed over an economy growing at an annualised rate of 2.5% with lots of upside still available with smart investment decisions.
I got the final count today and my company has taken down 14 open roles, salary budget for those 14 roles was an average of £74k which is well over a million quid that we won't spend in the UK and will push into Australia instead.
Our company announced a salary freeze on Wednesday and is now implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme.
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
Andy Bruce @BruceReuters 💥 Biggest September drop for consumer confidence since 1976 👇
Survey company @GfK links this to messaging around the Budget and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Quite a serious charge - the idea that the government is risking a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom.
As I said yesterday, the amount of doom and gloom coming from the new government is going to result in big reduction in growth for the end of this year and the start of next year. Companies are looking at all of the uncertainty surrounding the UK and battening down the hatches, balance sheets are being solidified with investment being cut to achieve that. What's completely crazy about this is that there was no need for any of it, the Tories handed over an economy growing at an annualised rate of 2.5% with lots of upside still available with smart investment decisions.
I got the final count today and my company has taken down 14 open roles, salary budget for those 14 roles was an average of £74k which is well over a million quid that we won't spend in the UK and will push into Australia instead.
Our company announced a salary freeze on Wednesday and is now implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme.
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
The only firms I'm seeing investing in IT projects are companies that have no choice but to do so,
Seriously. Can anyone tell me what is Labour’s big new plan for the economy?
We are being dragged further into a death loop debt spiral. Rich taxpayers are fleeing the dire warnings of higher taxes. Those higher taxes are going on absurdly generous pay deals for train drivers
Net zero via Ed Miliband is crushing us further. The government is actually cancelling infrastructure. Meanwhile the boats keep coming which means more billions spent. The government seems utterly uninterested in radical new tech which might help us
So, what is it? What’s the plan?
I don’t think they have one. Just vague and feeble hopes and damaging woke instincts
= disaster
THAT LABOUR PLAN IN FULL 1 Tax things 2 Tax working people 3 Take benefits away 4 Build houses (viewcode like!) 5 Use private hospitals to cope with waiting list patients (I hae my doots about that) 6 Coal, oil bad, wind farms good, tidal ignored, nuclear um?
THINGS IT OMITS 1 How to cope with a world where HNWIs and skilled labour are internationally mobile 2 How to cope with a world where migration waves are washing over Europe 3 How to build an armed forces that can handle 21st century warfare when the one we have doesn't know how, has shit equipment, and there aren't enough of them 4 How to cope with a multipolar world where the USA retreats from superpower status.
So some of their policies are good but others are bad or not thought thru, and the major state-threatening issues are not considered. This, combined with their authoritarian instincts, make them both overbearing and incompetent, a bad combo.
Andy Bruce @BruceReuters 💥 Biggest September drop for consumer confidence since 1976 👇
Survey company @GfK links this to messaging around the Budget and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Quite a serious charge - the idea that the government is risking a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom.
As I said yesterday, the amount of doom and gloom coming from the new government is going to result in big reduction in growth for the end of this year and the start of next year. Companies are looking at all of the uncertainty surrounding the UK and battening down the hatches, balance sheets are being solidified with investment being cut to achieve that. What's completely crazy about this is that there was no need for any of it, the Tories handed over an economy growing at an annualised rate of 2.5% with lots of upside still available with smart investment decisions.
I got the final count today and my company has taken down 14 open roles, salary budget for those 14 roles was an average of £74k which is well over a million quid that we won't spend in the UK and will push into Australia instead.
Our company announced a salary freeze on Wednesday and is now implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme.
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
The honeymoon will be well and truly over if Starmer and Reeves have talked UK into a recession.
I think the conclusion is correct. It is not fatal. They can recover. But will they.
"This is not a fatal moment for Sir Keir’s prime ministership. But it is a failure from which it is vital that Sir Keir should learn. He needs a stronger commitment to standards, effectively and independently enforced, so that politics and government can begin to be trusted again. That is not happening at the moment. But it is indispensable. Without it, the risks facing Labour in government will only continue to grow."
Starmer has shown himself able to learn lessons in the past but learning this one involves making personal sacrifices. I get being an addicted fan of a football team, I am one, but he is the PM. Maybe the solution is just not to go to matches. And he can clearly afford to buy his own glasses.
With a few exceptions this site is full of people utterly clueless about football & supporters.
He's had a season ticket for at least 18 years. He takes his kid, probably knows the people sitting nearby. The idea posted by someone that a couple of burly constables should sit either side is laughable as a security measure.
So far in the last couple of months we have had people suggesting he shouldn't have Shabbat dinner at home with his family & now can't go to a match.
Even politicians need a life.
The glasses, clothes etc is inexusable.
Tosser, you obviously have no principles or morals and happy that politicians engage in shafting teh public and cocking a snout at the plebs. You are not one of teh exceptions then , how many football fans that have bought season tickets for countless years get handed free private boxes smart arse.
Only the most aching of simpletons would have no concept of the security arrangements required for a PM
Every second out of Downing Street will require a risk assessment. Among the highest risk will be when you are a static target in a very public environment at a known time.
I've seen Rishi Sunak in a tiny village in North Yorkshire with his family on a quite Sunday. Two close protection officers were within 10 metres. Probably more close by.
Margaret Thatcher had close protection 24/7 for the 23 years after she left office.
How many football fans require this level of security "smart arse" ?
He's the fucking PM, he needs to decide what's more important. Going to football to see his "beloved" Arsenal for free and trousering over a hundred grand in freebies, which then paints him as a grifter and lose all credibility, or he wants to taken seriously as the Labour PM that came into power to sort out the country after 14 years of the Tory clownshow, including cutting the WFA for many pensioners. Currently, he looks like he likes the trough more than the country.
But John Major going to Lords to watch cricket or Stamford Bridge to watch the footbal was presumably fine.
It's the West Stand in (or very near) Directors seating.
That's what I wondered - I presume the Chelsea Pensioners in the shot were getting some kind of freebie?
A Chelsea Pensioner uniform is a free ticket to a number of London venues, including the Lord's pavilion on county days. Now I'm old enough to pass muster I'd be sorely tempted but it's probably a criminal offence to get dolled up like that without authority. Not sure I'd want to travel on the tube, either.
Courageous, if the war records of some of the Chelsea Pensioners are reported correctly.
You spend the rest of your days waiting for the scrape of zimmer frames outside your door....
Andy Bruce @BruceReuters 💥 Biggest September drop for consumer confidence since 1976 👇
Survey company @GfK links this to messaging around the Budget and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Quite a serious charge - the idea that the government is risking a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom.
As I said yesterday, the amount of doom and gloom coming from the new government is going to result in big reduction in growth for the end of this year and the start of next year. Companies are looking at all of the uncertainty surrounding the UK and battening down the hatches, balance sheets are being solidified with investment being cut to achieve that. What's completely crazy about this is that there was no need for any of it, the Tories handed over an economy growing at an annualised rate of 2.5% with lots of upside still available with smart investment decisions.
I got the final count today and my company has taken down 14 open roles, salary budget for those 14 roles was an average of £74k which is well over a million quid that we won't spend in the UK and will push into Australia instead.
Our company announced a salary freeze on Wednesday and is now implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme.
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
The honeymoon will be well and truly over if Starmer and Reeves have talked UK into a recession.
I need to get a bit of paper from a Court in England to get my mortgage in Ireland.
It's been established, over four days of emails, that the Court has a copy of this bit of paper. I need to pay a fee of £11 for them to send it to me.
To pay the fee I can either post them a cheque, or I can pay over the phone. The phone line is open for four hours each day. So far I have phoned... 29 times.
Most of the time I receive a message "sorry your call cannot be continued" straight away. If I'm lucky, it rings for 90 seconds first, and then I get the message. Why do they not even have a proper phone queue system (let alone an online payment portal)?
I'm going to have to post a cheque.
Is this what living in Britain has been like in the two years since I left? 40th time lucky?
Now I'm remembering that the GP surgery in Edinburgh wouldn't simply email our medical notes. My wife had to take a day trip to Edinburgh to collect a print out.
51 calls. All failed.
What's the British postal service like these days?
Should I send two cheques just in case one gets lost?
Will my bank be a bit suspicious about a nine and a half year gap between cheques?
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
You do!
(So do several others on here)
Ah
Unusual for Casino to ride to the defence of downtrodden public servants though - is he going all woke and leftie as he ages?
Falmouth SKS Party (19.8%) LDs +25.5% Swing SKS to LD 22.7%
Suspect next years local elections will be a bloodbath for Labour as they've now got a lot of councils and councilors to lose and pensioners will be turning out to seek revenge.
Looks like it's nearly all Shire counties that are Tory run, and last fought at peak Boris, so may be a tougher baseline for Tories than Labour.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Andy Bruce @BruceReuters 💥 Biggest September drop for consumer confidence since 1976 👇
Survey company @GfK links this to messaging around the Budget and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Quite a serious charge - the idea that the government is risking a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom.
As I said yesterday, the amount of doom and gloom coming from the new government is going to result in big reduction in growth for the end of this year and the start of next year. Companies are looking at all of the uncertainty surrounding the UK and battening down the hatches, balance sheets are being solidified with investment being cut to achieve that. What's completely crazy about this is that there was no need for any of it, the Tories handed over an economy growing at an annualised rate of 2.5% with lots of upside still available with smart investment decisions.
I got the final count today and my company has taken down 14 open roles, salary budget for those 14 roles was an average of £74k which is well over a million quid that we won't spend in the UK and will push into Australia instead.
Our company announced a salary freeze on Wednesday and is now implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme.
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
The honeymoon will be well and truly over if Starmer and Reeves have talked UK into a recession.
I think they already have, household confidence is shattered, business confidence is shattered and investment is being put off or cancelled.
My wife has begun house hunting in Ticino which is a real eyeopener on how expensive property can really be.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
The Leeds NGT saga is quite something. My wife worked on it for about five years (well, not actually on it as no work was actually started on it, but on regularly updated and revised economic cases, evidence for inquiry etc).
Seriously. Can anyone tell me what is Labour’s big new plan for the economy?
We are being dragged further into a death loop debt spiral. Rich taxpayers are fleeing the dire warnings of higher taxes. Those higher taxes are going on absurdly generous pay deals for train drivers
Net zero via Ed Miliband is crushing us further. The government is actually cancelling infrastructure. Meanwhile the boats keep coming which means more billions spent. The government seems utterly uninterested in radical new tech which might help us
So, what is it? What’s the plan?
I don’t think they have one. Just vague and feeble hopes and damaging woke instincts
= disaster
THAT LABOUR PLAN IN FULL 1 Tax things 2 Tax working people 3 Take benefits away 4 Build houses (viewcode like!) 5 Use private hospitals to cope with waiting list patients (I hae my doots about that) 6 Coal, oil bad, wind farms good, tidal ignored, nuclear um?
THINGS IT OMITS 1 How to cope with a world where HNWIs and skilled labour are internationally mobile 2 How to cope with a world where migration waves are washing over Europe 3 How to build an armed forces that can handle 21st century warfare when the one we have doesn't know how, has shit equipment, and there aren't enough of them 4 How to cope with a multipolar world where the USA retreats from superpower status.
So some of their policies are good but others are bad or not thought thru, and the major state-threatening issues are not considered. This, combined with their authoritarian instincts, make them both overbearing and incompetent, a bad combo.
They've done no thinking at all.
They need to read the manifesto I just posted. Most of what they need is in there.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
You do!
(So do several others on here)
Ah
Unusual for Casino to ride to the defence of downtrodden public servants though - is he going all woke and leftie as he ages?
And I managed to quote myself, rather than Nigel. I'm clearly spending Friday afternoon asleep. #onlyinthepublicsector
According to the first Techne UK weekly tracker poll for The Independent, Labour has increased its lead over the Tories from 10 per cent on the day of the election to 12 per cent.
Sir Keir’s party is still the number 1 choice among pensioners aged 65 and over, with 19 per cent compared to 14 per cent for the Conservatives. This despite the much criticised decision to cancel winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners.
Overall, excluding “don’t knows” or “wouldn’t vote”, Labour polls at 33 per cent, just one point below what they received on election day. The Tories, who are still looking for a leader to replace Rishi Sunak, are down three points to 21 per cent. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is up four points to 18 per cent.
The big story here is that neither Lab nor Con is remotely close to being popular, with 54% between them, after DKs etc have been removed.
The opportunity here for LDs and Reform is enormous.
According to the BBC the big story concerns the sex crimes of a deceased Egyptian shopkeeper. Other squirrels are available.
The BBC hardly ever report opinion polls these days, and with good reason, particularly with 58 months of the parliament left to run and when it's a pollster whose track record leaves something to be desired.
WRT micro detail that is fair enough of the BBC. But the real story is that Lab/Con support combined are at just over 50% of those expressing an opinion, and therefore almost certainly under a half of the voting age population. This story is a very slow moving one (until it isn't) but both true and huge.
Taking full account of the LDs (because of seats) and Reform (because of votes) is essential to comprehend the current odd political picture, with its soporific mix of indifference, passionate wrong headedness, uselessness from the 2 traditional governing parties, NOTA, solution-free thinking and fun fait antics.
Andy Bruce @BruceReuters 💥 Biggest September drop for consumer confidence since 1976 👇
Survey company @GfK links this to messaging around the Budget and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Quite a serious charge - the idea that the government is risking a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom.
As I said yesterday, the amount of doom and gloom coming from the new government is going to result in big reduction in growth for the end of this year and the start of next year. Companies are looking at all of the uncertainty surrounding the UK and battening down the hatches, balance sheets are being solidified with investment being cut to achieve that. What's completely crazy about this is that there was no need for any of it, the Tories handed over an economy growing at an annualised rate of 2.5% with lots of upside still available with smart investment decisions.
I got the final count today and my company has taken down 14 open roles, salary budget for those 14 roles was an average of £74k which is well over a million quid that we won't spend in the UK and will push into Australia instead.
Our company announced a salary freeze on Wednesday and is now implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme.
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
Yes, overseas seems to be the destination right now, but don't worry, @stodge will be along soon to tell you that the UK doesn't need high earning workers, it really only needs the swathes of people in the public sector, everyone else can go take a long walk off a short pier if they suggest it might be time to cut spending.
I think the conclusion is correct. It is not fatal. They can recover. But will they.
"This is not a fatal moment for Sir Keir’s prime ministership. But it is a failure from which it is vital that Sir Keir should learn. He needs a stronger commitment to standards, effectively and independently enforced, so that politics and government can begin to be trusted again. That is not happening at the moment. But it is indispensable. Without it, the risks facing Labour in government will only continue to grow."
Starmer has shown himself able to learn lessons in the past but learning this one involves making personal sacrifices. I get being an addicted fan of a football team, I am one, but he is the PM. Maybe the solution is just not to go to matches. And he can clearly afford to buy his own glasses.
With a few exceptions this site is full of people utterly clueless about football & supporters.
He's had a season ticket for at least 18 years. He takes his kid, probably knows the people sitting nearby. The idea posted by someone that a couple of burly constables should sit either side is laughable as a security measure.
So far in the last couple of months we have had people suggesting he shouldn't have Shabbat dinner at home with his family & now can't go to a match.
Even politicians need a life.
The glasses, clothes etc is inexusable.
Tosser, you obviously have no principles or morals and happy that politicians engage in shafting teh public and cocking a snout at the plebs. You are not one of teh exceptions then , how many football fans that have bought season tickets for countless years get handed free private boxes smart arse.
Only the most aching of simpletons would have no concept of the security arrangements required for a PM
Every second out of Downing Street will require a risk assessment. Among the highest risk will be when you are a static target in a very public environment at a known time.
I've seen Rishi Sunak in a tiny village in North Yorkshire with his family on a quite Sunday. Two close protection officers were within 10 metres. Probably more close by.
Margaret Thatcher had close protection 24/7 for the 23 years after she left office.
How many football fans require this level of security "smart arse" ?
He's the fucking PM, he needs to decide what's more important. Going to football to see his "beloved" Arsenal for free and trousering over a hundred grand in freebies, which then paints him as a grifter and lose all credibility, or he wants to taken seriously as the Labour PM that came into power to sort out the country after 14 years of the Tory clownshow, including cutting the WFA for many pensioners. Currently, he looks like he likes the trough more than the country.
But John Major going to Lords to watch cricket or Stamford Bridge to watch the footbal was presumably fine.
It's the West Stand in (or very near) Directors seating.
That's what I wondered - I presume the Chelsea Pensioners in the shot were getting some kind of freebie?
A Chelsea Pensioner uniform is a free ticket to a number of London venues, including the Lord's pavilion on county days. Now I'm old enough to pass muster I'd be sorely tempted but it's probably a criminal offence to get dolled up like that without authority. Not sure I'd want to travel on the tube, either.
Courageous, if the war records of some of the Chelsea Pensioners are reported correctly.
You spend the rest of your days waiting for the scrape of zimmer frames outside your door....
Was given a tour of the 'ospital by a real-life pensioner. It's bleak. Small barrack rooms shared by two, almost no space for possessions. 24/7 camaraderie not to everyone's taste.
I've always been employed by the private sector. Employer contributions have been: 5%, 5%, 6% and 6%, in that order, in a stakeholder plan. Which I have to match to even get that.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
I think the IMF are going to do that for us in 2028, there will be an internal default in the UK to public sector pension holders. I expect a 30% haircut to payouts for current and future pensioners will be on the cards, maybe more.
https://www.status.news/p/olivia-nuzzi-rfk-new-york-magazine New York magazine on Thursday said its Washington correspondent, Olivia Nuzzi, is on leave after learning the star journalist had allegedly engaged in a romantic relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "Recently our Washington Correspondent Olivia Nuzzi acknowledged to the magazine’s editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign, a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures," a spokesperson for New York magazine said in a statement in response to questions from Status. "Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign," the spokesperson added. "An internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias. She is currently on leave from the magazine, and the magazine is conducting a more thorough third-party review. We regret this violation of our readers’ trust."..
I've always been employed by the private sector. Employer contributions have been: 5%, 5%, 6% and 6%, in that order, in a stakeholder plan. Which I have to match to even get that.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
Indeed, the best pension contribution I've ever had was 8% of regular salary and it was only matched so I had to put in 8% too. In my current job it's 6% matched contributions which is pretty generous in the private sector.
Ref the Techne poll, this is what happens when you come into government without much of a positive plan, without much of a narrative other than 'the other lot are incompetent and corrupt and we're not' and without a decent day-to-day political ops team.
Labour did virtually none of the groundwork on the economy in getting the message across (unlike Blair/Brown pre-1997, even though the Tories had already done most of the hard lifting, and unlike Cameron pre-2010, when it really was valid). Starting off by cutting benefits may or may not be a sensible move from a Treasury point of view but it's one the country really wasn't ready for politically because there'd not been the case made that things were that bad - or if they were that bad, why the cuts had to fall there.
Meanwhile, Sue Grey doesn't have the political background to manage the private office, to anticipate and neuter hostile stories (whether towards her or Labour), or to push the government's own agenda (not least because there isn't a Big Picture from them at the moment). She might be a competent manager; she might be a decent person; she's not a politician - elected or administrative - and as such she's in the wrong job.
For a party which has been on the back foot in terms of media and public support / hostility for most of the time since 2002, they've adopted a remarkably passive attitude to letting things happen. Either you make the news or the news makes you.
All correct of course.
Except why do you need a political ops team to tell you that removing WFA is toxic out of all proportion to the cash, you don't take freebies beyond trivialities if 'we are all in this together', the new back room and Number 10 team sorts out its problems in private, and you have to communicate a direction of travel which is coherent to simple people like voters. Mystifying.
Message for the Tories, looking forward in gleeful anticipation to another four years of disaster, bugger off, if you've nothing useful to say.
I fear that you misunderstand political debate, if you think that the opposition to a government will wait, politely, with folded hands, for the next election campaign.
Everything that Cameron, Johnson etc etc got is going to given back to the current government.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
Andy Bruce @BruceReuters 💥 Biggest September drop for consumer confidence since 1976 👇
Survey company @GfK links this to messaging around the Budget and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Quite a serious charge - the idea that the government is risking a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom.
As I said yesterday, the amount of doom and gloom coming from the new government is going to result in big reduction in growth for the end of this year and the start of next year. Companies are looking at all of the uncertainty surrounding the UK and battening down the hatches, balance sheets are being solidified with investment being cut to achieve that. What's completely crazy about this is that there was no need for any of it, the Tories handed over an economy growing at an annualised rate of 2.5% with lots of upside still available with smart investment decisions.
I got the final count today and my company has taken down 14 open roles, salary budget for those 14 roles was an average of £74k which is well over a million quid that we won't spend in the UK and will push into Australia instead.
Our company announced a salary freeze on Wednesday and is now implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme.
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
Yes, overseas seems to be the destination right now, but don't worry, @stodge will be along soon to tell you that the UK doesn't need high earning workers, it really only needs the swathes of people in the public sector, everyone else can go take a long walk off a short pier if they suggest it might be time to cut spending.
Well, that's the usual gross over-simplification of what I said but never mind.
I can't speak to what's happening in your world or @Casino_Royale's or whether it's being reflected across other parts of the private sector. There are genuine recruitment problems across elements of local Government for example.
I'd simply point out thinking of the private sector as one thing is as invalid as thinking the same of the public sector. Said sector covers a multitude of activities from local to central Government and as I've said the local Government sector has lost more than a million jobs since 2012 while the actual number of civil servants (those working directly to Government departments) is just over half a million.
If we are talking about the NHS or elements of the armed forces, there may well be efficiencies or savings to be made but the preceding Conservative administrations did the sum total of bugger all from 2010 and of course Covid enforced the sanctity of the frontline NHS staff. IF we have a Government which is predicated to a root-and-branch reform of the NHS with the emphasis on providing strong patient services, I'd be the first to support any cuts or savings which can be produced.
You're the one who has gone on about 50% headcount reductions and I have no clue whether you mean reducing nurses or social care worker numbers by 50% or the idea there are legions of administrators whose numbers could be reduced by investment in technology and automaton to improve business processes - perhaps something the private sector should be getting into.
Ref the Techne poll, this is what happens when you come into government without much of a positive plan, without much of a narrative other than 'the other lot are incompetent and corrupt and we're not' and without a decent day-to-day political ops team.
Labour did virtually none of the groundwork on the economy in getting the message across (unlike Blair/Brown pre-1997, even though the Tories had already done most of the hard lifting, and unlike Cameron pre-2010, when it really was valid). Starting off by cutting benefits may or may not be a sensible move from a Treasury point of view but it's one the country really wasn't ready for politically because there'd not been the case made that things were that bad - or if they were that bad, why the cuts had to fall there.
Meanwhile, Sue Grey doesn't have the political background to manage the private office, to anticipate and neuter hostile stories (whether towards her or Labour), or to push the government's own agenda (not least because there isn't a Big Picture from them at the moment). She might be a competent manager; she might be a decent person; she's not a politician - elected or administrative - and as such she's in the wrong job.
For a party which has been on the back foot in terms of media and public support / hostility for most of the time since 2002, they've adopted a remarkably passive attitude to letting things happen. Either you make the news or the news makes you.
All correct of course.
Except why do you need a political ops team to tell you that removing WFA is toxic out of all proportion to the cash, you don't take freebies beyond trivialities if 'we are all in this together', the new back room and Number 10 team sorts out its problems in private, and you have to communicate a direction of travel which is coherent to simple people like voters. Mystifying.
How many days until Mandelson is brought into No. 10 to sort out the mess?
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
And that's the problem this Government has to address. For reasons unknown, possibly the impact of austerity, possibly other reasons outside of our control, this country has a productivity crisis.
Now one reason for that is probably a lack of investment - compare local transport in any city outside London and remember that today Krakow announced their own metro system with work starting 2028...
Ref the Techne poll, this is what happens when you come into government without much of a positive plan, without much of a narrative other than 'the other lot are incompetent and corrupt and we're not' and without a decent day-to-day political ops team.
Labour did virtually none of the groundwork on the economy in getting the message across (unlike Blair/Brown pre-1997, even though the Tories had already done most of the hard lifting, and unlike Cameron pre-2010, when it really was valid). Starting off by cutting benefits may or may not be a sensible move from a Treasury point of view but it's one the country really wasn't ready for politically because there'd not been the case made that things were that bad - or if they were that bad, why the cuts had to fall there.
Meanwhile, Sue Grey doesn't have the political background to manage the private office, to anticipate and neuter hostile stories (whether towards her or Labour), or to push the government's own agenda (not least because there isn't a Big Picture from them at the moment). She might be a competent manager; she might be a decent person; she's not a politician - elected or administrative - and as such she's in the wrong job.
For a party which has been on the back foot in terms of media and public support / hostility for most of the time since 2002, they've adopted a remarkably passive attitude to letting things happen. Either you make the news or the news makes you.
All correct of course.
Except why do you need a political ops team to tell you that removing WFA is toxic out of all proportion to the cash, you don't take freebies beyond trivialities if 'we are all in this together', the new back room and Number 10 team sorts out its problems in private, and you have to communicate a direction of travel which is coherent to simple people like voters. Mystifying.
How many days until Mandelson is brought into No. 10 to sort out the mess?
It was a mistake not to make him Foreign Secretary. I think he's a loathsome individual but he was also a highly effective political operator and kept two warring factions in line for almost 10 years from 1997 to 2007.
I've always been employed by the private sector. Employer contributions have been: 5%, 5%, 6% and 6%, in that order, in a stakeholder plan. Which I have to match to even get that.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
Again, the "public sector" isn't one beast and there are many different pension schemes. You have the civil service pension, the local Government pension and the pensions for teachers as well as the schemes for fire fighters, police, ambulance workers and other emergency services.
Each of those operates in a different way with different employer and employee contributions. When I was in the Local Government Scheme (LPGS), the contributions increased with seniority so the employees paid in more where the employer paid more for those further down the pay scales. It was, and let's be honest, designed to be part of recruitment and retention.
As an example, we would get newly qualified solicitors or surveyors who would come into the Council, do two or three years while micing work experience with qualifications, CPD and other training and would then leave to go to one of the big private firms having got both the experience and the qualifications and the process would start again.
The older professionals joined usually in their late 40s when settled with children and wanting steady work and the opportunity to build up a pension. They often took a substantial pay cut to achieve that but the Council benefitted from their experience.
Message for the Tories, looking forward in gleeful anticipation to another four years of disaster, bugger off, if you've nothing useful to say.
I fear that you misunderstand political debate, if you think that the opposition to a government will wait, politely, with folded hands, for the next election campaign.
Everything that Cameron, Johnson etc etc got is going to given back to the current government.
This is the way of politics. 'Twas ever thus.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I don't mind people having a go at the government; I'll do so myself. It's the complete lack of interest in what a government with an unassailable majority might usefully do for the next four years, irrespective of wanting to see the back of it.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
And that's the problem this Government has to address. For reasons unknown, possibly the impact of austerity, possibly other reasons outside of our control, this country has a productivity crisis.
Now one reason for that is probably a lack of investment - compare local transport in any city outside London and remember that today Krakow announced their own metro system with work starting 2028...
I thought this was one thing Labour would definitely do: sweep away planning obstacles and prioritise urban and inter city transport. All we can do is try and grow our way out of this mess and hope to ramp up productivity
The Trump Media share price is down to $13.75 today.
Trump can sell as of today, as lock up restrictions end. But only if the price is above $12.
Trump - the majority shareholder - has said he won't sell. But he had to, or the stock would be in single figures. That they are only just above that price suggests there is a degree of skepticism about his assurance. Hard to think why...
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
Ref the Techne poll, this is what happens when you come into government without much of a positive plan, without much of a narrative other than 'the other lot are incompetent and corrupt and we're not' and without a decent day-to-day political ops team.
Labour did virtually none of the groundwork on the economy in getting the message across (unlike Blair/Brown pre-1997, even though the Tories had already done most of the hard lifting, and unlike Cameron pre-2010, when it really was valid). Starting off by cutting benefits may or may not be a sensible move from a Treasury point of view but it's one the country really wasn't ready for politically because there'd not been the case made that things were that bad - or if they were that bad, why the cuts had to fall there.
Meanwhile, Sue Grey doesn't have the political background to manage the private office, to anticipate and neuter hostile stories (whether towards her or Labour), or to push the government's own agenda (not least because there isn't a Big Picture from them at the moment). She might be a competent manager; she might be a decent person; she's not a politician - elected or administrative - and as such she's in the wrong job.
For a party which has been on the back foot in terms of media and public support / hostility for most of the time since 2002, they've adopted a remarkably passive attitude to letting things happen. Either you make the news or the news makes you.
All correct of course.
Except why do you need a political ops team to tell you that removing WFA is toxic out of all proportion to the cash, you don't take freebies beyond trivialities if 'we are all in this together', the new back room and Number 10 team sorts out its problems in private, and you have to communicate a direction of travel which is coherent to simple people like voters. Mystifying.
How many days until Mandelson is brought into No. 10 to sort out the mess?
Ref the Techne poll, this is what happens when you come into government without much of a positive plan, without much of a narrative other than 'the other lot are incompetent and corrupt and we're not' and without a decent day-to-day political ops team.
Labour did virtually none of the groundwork on the economy in getting the message across (unlike Blair/Brown pre-1997, even though the Tories had already done most of the hard lifting, and unlike Cameron pre-2010, when it really was valid). Starting off by cutting benefits may or may not be a sensible move from a Treasury point of view but it's one the country really wasn't ready for politically because there'd not been the case made that things were that bad - or if they were that bad, why the cuts had to fall there.
Meanwhile, Sue Grey doesn't have the political background to manage the private office, to anticipate and neuter hostile stories (whether towards her or Labour), or to push the government's own agenda (not least because there isn't a Big Picture from them at the moment). She might be a competent manager; she might be a decent person; she's not a politician - elected or administrative - and as such she's in the wrong job.
For a party which has been on the back foot in terms of media and public support / hostility for most of the time since 2002, they've adopted a remarkably passive attitude to letting things happen. Either you make the news or the news makes you.
All correct of course.
Except why do you need a political ops team to tell you that removing WFA is toxic out of all proportion to the cash, you don't take freebies beyond trivialities if 'we are all in this together', the new back room and Number 10 team sorts out its problems in private, and you have to communicate a direction of travel which is coherent to simple people like voters. Mystifying.
How many days until Mandelson is brought into No. 10 to sort out the mess?
Mandelson or the IMF - who gets the call first?
We should simply bring in the Singaporeans to run everything
Last night I booked 2 day return tickets for my wife and myself to Aberystwyth on the Transport for Wales app
A confirmation email was received, but said that neither the e mail nor my app was the ticket and I had to go to the station who would provide the tickets
Accordingly I went to the station and the ticket office produced no less than 7 tickets including my parking ticket
I did say to the staff member why on earth did I have to have hard tickets when last time we travelled on TFW our tickets were live on my phone
He had no idea and seemed surprised, and to be honest that is just a small example of what is wrong with the use of IT in some industries
Contrast that with the 4,000 km round trip on 7 trains in Europe I took last month, everything on the phone in two apps.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
And, ultimately, that is why Conservative cheerleaders can pipe down for a bit. If they seek their memorial, they can damn well look around. The current state of things is on them. Yes, the Attlee-based planning system is bad, but they failed to fix that.
We have had fourteen years of a government that has pandered to Nimbies and short-termists. People who want tax cuts and freebies to benefit them, now, rather than investment to benefit future generations. That's why stuff is falling down and productivity is rubbish.
Gove, I think, got that, but had to back down because his party was trapped with its electorate. I don't know if Labour will get it right, but the early signs are promising and they can't get it as wrong.
Before my time but I sense The Herd might be back?
Well before mine but if this is about Tory pile ones, SKS has done more for Con morale than anyone since early middle period Maggie. I am expecting his conference speech to be Some Like It Hot, Airplane, Code of the Woosters level stuff and am disappointed the accreditation deadline has been and gone.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
And, ultimately, that is why Conservative cheerleaders can pipe down for a bit. If they seek their memorial, they can damn well look around. The current state of things is on them. Yes, the Attlee-based planning system is bad, but they failed to fix that.
We have had fourteen years of a government that has pandered to Nimbies and short-termists. People who want tax cuts and freebies to benefit them, now, rather than investment to benefit future generations. That's why stuff is falling down and productivity is rubbish.
Gove, I think, got that, but had to back down because his party was trapped with its electorate. I don't know if Labour will get it right, but the early signs are promising and they can't get it as wrong.
I see no sign that Labour will deal with the Process State. They are led by a lawyer whose entire life has demonstrated to him that more Law and more Process is better.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is jarring to read something, be nodding along, then come to a shuddering halt when they say something you know to be untrue. I've been head down in reservoir stuff for a few years. The last reservoir opened was Hawks Tor, a couple of years back (and I believe SW Water opened two others in a similar time period). Abberton Reservoir in Essex was MASSIVELY expanded in 2012, as well. On the heels of a huge and multi-decade expansion in reservoir capacity way beyond population growth from the Twenties to the Seventies.
This isn't to say we don't need an expansion of water capacity, but I've read the NIC report (repeatedly). They want water transfers and huge leakage reduction (we leak out at a greater rate than our intake from all reservoirs, which is absurd).
These are resisted by water companies due to commercial risk in relying on each other (transfers) and a lack of increase in regulated capital asset value (for leakage repair); building reservoirs means they can increase prices by RCAV, so that's their go-to, even in water stressed areas where they wouldn't be able to fill those reservoirs.
Message for the Tories, looking forward in gleeful anticipation to another four years of disaster, bugger off, if you've nothing useful to say.
I fear that you misunderstand political debate, if you think that the opposition to a government will wait, politely, with folded hands, for the next election campaign.
Everything that Cameron, Johnson etc etc got is going to given back to the current government.
This is the way of politics. 'Twas ever thus.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I don't mind people having a go at the government; I'll do so myself. It's the complete lack of interest in what a government with an unassailable majority might usefully do for the next four years, irrespective of wanting to see the back of it.
If the government would get off its arse and give us some hints and proposals that would be a start, no?
Andy Bruce @BruceReuters 💥 Biggest September drop for consumer confidence since 1976 👇
Survey company @GfK links this to messaging around the Budget and withdrawal of winter fuel allowance.
Quite a serious charge - the idea that the government is risking a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom.
As I said yesterday, the amount of doom and gloom coming from the new government is going to result in big reduction in growth for the end of this year and the start of next year. Companies are looking at all of the uncertainty surrounding the UK and battening down the hatches, balance sheets are being solidified with investment being cut to achieve that. What's completely crazy about this is that there was no need for any of it, the Tories handed over an economy growing at an annualised rate of 2.5% with lots of upside still available with smart investment decisions.
I got the final count today and my company has taken down 14 open roles, salary budget for those 14 roles was an average of £74k which is well over a million quid that we won't spend in the UK and will push into Australia instead.
Our company announced a salary freeze on Wednesday and is now implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme.
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
Yes, overseas seems to be the destination right now, but don't worry, @stodge will be along soon to tell you that the UK doesn't need high earning workers, it really only needs the swathes of people in the public sector, everyone else can go take a long walk off a short pier if they suggest it might be time to cut spending.
Well, that's the usual gross over-simplification of what I said but never mind.
I can't speak to what's happening in your world or @Casino_Royale's or whether it's being reflected across other parts of the private sector. There are genuine recruitment problems across elements of local Government for example.
I'd simply point out thinking of the private sector as one thing is as invalid as thinking the same of the public sector. Said sector covers a multitude of activities from local to central Government and as I've said the local Government sector has lost more than a million jobs since 2012 while the actual number of civil servants (those working directly to Government departments) is just over half a million.
If we are talking about the NHS or elements of the armed forces, there may well be efficiencies or savings to be made but the preceding Conservative administrations did the sum total of bugger all from 2010 and of course Covid enforced the sanctity of the frontline NHS staff. IF we have a Government which is predicated to a root-and-branch reform of the NHS with the emphasis on providing strong patient services, I'd be the first to support any cuts or savings which can be produced.
You're the one who has gone on about 50% headcount reductions and I have no clue whether you mean reducing nurses or social care worker numbers by 50% or the idea there are legions of administrators whose numbers could be reduced by investment in technology and automaton to improve business processes - perhaps something the private sector should be getting into.
Max is a typical Conservative. He understands the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
I've always been employed by the private sector. Employer contributions have been: 5%, 5%, 6% and 6%, in that order, in a stakeholder plan. Which I have to match to even get that.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
I spent my entire 41 year career in the private sector. Second job I had came with a final salary pension. Plenty of times I could have switched employers for more salary but, since I was happy with the work opportunities where I was, I decided not to chase the higher salaries. The FS pension was a factor in that decision.
Was it the best decision overall financially? Who knows, but no regrets.
Ref the Techne poll, this is what happens when you come into government without much of a positive plan, without much of a narrative other than 'the other lot are incompetent and corrupt and we're not' and without a decent day-to-day political ops team.
Labour did virtually none of the groundwork on the economy in getting the message across (unlike Blair/Brown pre-1997, even though the Tories had already done most of the hard lifting, and unlike Cameron pre-2010, when it really was valid). Starting off by cutting benefits may or may not be a sensible move from a Treasury point of view but it's one the country really wasn't ready for politically because there'd not been the case made that things were that bad - or if they were that bad, why the cuts had to fall there.
Meanwhile, Sue Grey doesn't have the political background to manage the private office, to anticipate and neuter hostile stories (whether towards her or Labour), or to push the government's own agenda (not least because there isn't a Big Picture from them at the moment). She might be a competent manager; she might be a decent person; she's not a politician - elected or administrative - and as such she's in the wrong job.
For a party which has been on the back foot in terms of media and public support / hostility for most of the time since 2002, they've adopted a remarkably passive attitude to letting things happen. Either you make the news or the news makes you.
All correct of course.
Except why do you need a political ops team to tell you that removing WFA is toxic out of all proportion to the cash, you don't take freebies beyond trivialities if 'we are all in this together', the new back room and Number 10 team sorts out its problems in private, and you have to communicate a direction of travel which is coherent to simple people like voters. Mystifying.
How many days until Mandelson is brought into No. 10 to sort out the mess?
Mandelson or the IMF - who gets the call first?
We should simply bring in the Singaporeans to run everything
Hand the government over to a political Sven-Göran Eriksson.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
And, ultimately, that is why Conservative cheerleaders can pipe down for a bit. If they seek their memorial, they can damn well look around. The current state of things is on them. Yes, the Attlee-based planning system is bad, but they failed to fix that.
We have had fourteen years of a government that has pandered to Nimbies and short-termists. People who want tax cuts and freebies to benefit them, now, rather than investment to benefit future generations. That's why stuff is falling down and productivity is rubbish.
Gove, I think, got that, but had to back down because his party was trapped with its electorate. I don't know if Labour will get it right, but the early signs are promising and they can't get it as wrong.
It's good to hear a more balanced tone against the cacophony of anti-Labour rhetoric on here currently.
The new Government has been politically poor in its first three months but sometimes it's about learning "on the job" and I suspect things will improve over time.
That said, the much bigger problems facing the country are now coming to the surface and the scale of the waste of the Conservative years, particularly after 2015, is also becoming evident.
The rabbit hole of EU membership took up far too much Government time and effort and money.
The other unfortunate truth is if cheap labour is available it will be used whereas the time and effort to improve productivity by looking at business processes, automaton and other areas of performance is rarely used and if firms and councils can simply recruit more pairs of hands to solve a problem that's what they'll do.
As @Big_G_NorthWales's experience also shows, there's a lack of joined up thinking across sectors and industries. We've lived a generation on financial methodone from QE and labour methodone from a cheap supply of workers from Europe and we're now having to face the effects of withdrawal and we've not even done the preliminary thinking of trying to imagine an economy growing without cheap labour.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
Yes, and bigger up front salaries (paid for by reduced pension liabilities) would make them more attractive.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
But there is no "market" when it comes to public sector pay and pensions. It's all settled by unions and pay bodies. I'm sure if it were market led then pensions would be substantially lower and salaries somewhat higher.
I've always been employed by the private sector. Employer contributions have been: 5%, 5%, 6% and 6%, in that order, in a stakeholder plan. Which I have to match to even get that.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
What hardships you face! It is painful to even read! How you suffer such slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!
Oh, but your basic rate of pay is humongous. So maybe don’t be such a crybaby.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
Well, isn’t a good thing that the party that was in charge for most of the 2008-24 period is now out of power?
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is jarring to read something, be nodding along, then come to a shuddering halt when they say something you know to be untrue. I've been head down in reservoir stuff for a few years. The last reservoir opened was Hawks Tor, a couple of years back (and I believe SW Water opened two others in a similar time period). Abberton Reservoir in Essex was MASSIVELY expanded in 2012, as well. On the heels of a huge and multi-decade expansion in reservoir capacity way beyond population growth from the Twenties to the Seventies.
This isn't to say we don't need an expansion of water capacity, but I've read the NIC report (repeatedly). They want water transfers and huge leakage reduction (we leak out at a greater rate than our intake from all reservoirs, which is absurd).
These are resisted by water companies due to commercial risk in relying on each other (transfers) and a lack of increase in regulated capital asset value (for leakage repair); building reservoirs means they can increase prices by RCAV, so that's their go-to, even in water stressed areas where they wouldn't be able to fill those reservoirs.
Good point - though Hawks Tor was an old clay pit that was already there, so not exactly "built new".
It's hard to disagree with the central thesis, though.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
The nation didn’t invest enough because of austerity. That’s the number 1 culprit, I suspect.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
Surprised TSE hasn't picked up on this bit of the piece.
...France is notoriously heavily regulated and dominated by labour unions. In 2023, the country was brought to a standstill by strikes against proposals to raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64. French workers have been known to strike by kidnapping their chief executives – a practice that the public there reportedly supports – and strikes are so common that French unions have designed special barbecues that fit in tram tracks so they can grill sausages while they march...
..And yet, despite these high taxes, onerous regulations, and powerful unions, French workers are significantly more productive than British ones – closer to Americans than to us. France’s GDP per capita is only about the same as the UK’s because French workers take more time off on holiday and work shorter hours. What can explain France’s prosperity in spite of its high taxes and high business regulations? France can afford such a large, interventionist state because it does a good job building the things that Britain blocks: housing, infrastructure and energy supply...
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
The nation didn’t invest enough because of austerity. That’s the number 1 culprit, I suspect.
Jobs were protected at the expense of investing in productivity. We need to have the courage to do things that make people redundant.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is jarring to read something, be nodding along, then come to a shuddering halt when they say something you know to be untrue. I've been head down in reservoir stuff for a few years. The last reservoir opened was Hawks Tor, a couple of years back (and I believe SW Water opened two others in a similar time period). Abberton Reservoir in Essex was MASSIVELY expanded in 2012, as well. On the heels of a huge and multi-decade expansion in reservoir capacity way beyond population growth from the Twenties to the Seventies.
This isn't to say we don't need an expansion of water capacity, but I've read the NIC report (repeatedly). They want water transfers and huge leakage reduction (we leak out at a greater rate than our intake from all reservoirs, which is absurd).
These are resisted by water companies due to commercial risk in relying on each other (transfers) and a lack of increase in regulated capital asset value (for leakage repair); building reservoirs means they can increase prices by RCAV, so that's their go-to, even in water stressed areas where they wouldn't be able to fill those reservoirs.
Good point - though Hawks Tor was an old clay pit that was already there, so not exactly "built new".
It's hard to disagree with the central thesis, though.
There are plenty of such around that can be repurposed, though, and it's 1.5 megalitres, so, while small, not to be sniffed at (median reservoir size is c. 3.5 megalitres, from recollection). If you go for reservoirs, going for multiple small dispersed reservoirs is ideal (per Dieter Helm); planning is quick and easy (comparatively) and getting them up and running is much quicker and cheaper (as most of them are already dug out, as you say). But the capital value is also comparatively low, so the RCAV is very limited.
Edit: I do agree with the central thesis, though, and the Thames Crossing is particularly egregious. It just disappoints me when important points (such as their central thesis) are impaired by inaccuracies and piling things in from other causes to try to increase weight.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
But there is no "market" when it comes to public sector pay and pensions. It's all settled by unions and pay bodies. I'm sure if it were market led then pensions would be substantially lower and salaries somewhat higher.
There is a labour market. People choose what employers to work for. I can work for the public sector proper, the university sector or go to industry. I have colleagues who have gone back and forth between civil service posts, big companies and start-up opportunities. Several posters here keep going on about rich people fleeing the country: well, that’s happening with doctors going to places like Australia where the pay is better. Even Sue Gray has gone between private and public sector roles!
So Labour have actually plunged SEVEN points in 10 weeks. Given that Techne seem to wildly overstate Labour (40% on election day??) then Labour in reality might be down in the 20s
Have they changed their methodology?
I’ve no idea. Have you? They’ve not mentioned it on their TwiX feed
Given how badly they called the election one is tempted to ignore them entirely whatever they say
Yes they have. From their methodology small print,
The planned sample is represented by 1500 interviews, plus 124 over-sampling. The choice of over-sampling was based on the need to have a consistent number of cases in each weighting cell represented by the stratification between region or country and voting behavior in 2024 general elections.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
But there is no "market" when it comes to public sector pay and pensions. It's all settled by unions and pay bodies. I'm sure if it were market led then pensions would be substantially lower and salaries somewhat higher.
There is a labour market. People choose what employers to work for. I can work for the public sector proper, the university sector or go to industry. I have colleagues who have gone back and forth between civil service posts, big companies and start-up opportunities. Several posters here keep going on about rich people fleeing the country: well, that’s happening with doctors going to places like Australia where the pay is better. Even Sue Gray has gone between private and public sector roles!
You said it yourself. People are going to Australia for the [up front] pay, not the pensions.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
The nation didn’t invest enough because of austerity. That’s the number 1 culprit, I suspect.
Jobs were protected at the expense of investing in productivity. We need to have the courage to do things that make people redundant.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
But there is no "market" when it comes to public sector pay and pensions. It's all settled by unions and pay bodies. I'm sure if it were market led then pensions would be substantially lower and salaries somewhat higher.
There is a labour market. People choose what employers to work for. I can work for the public sector proper, the university sector or go to industry. I have colleagues who have gone back and forth between civil service posts, big companies and start-up opportunities. Several posters here keep going on about rich people fleeing the country: well, that’s happening with doctors going to places like Australia where the pay is better. Even Sue Gray has gone between private and public sector roles!
You haven't addressed the point I made? Can public sector bodies offer variations on pension contributions or salaries? No. Therefore it's not a proper market. If a manager has a good candidate who has a £75k offer with a 5% pension in the private sector but £65k and 27% pension in the public sector can that manager match the private sector offer and cut the pension to 5% to make up the £10k salary difference? No? Then it's not a proper market.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is jarring to read something, be nodding along, then come to a shuddering halt when they say something you know to be untrue. I've been head down in reservoir stuff for a few years. The last reservoir opened was Hawks Tor, a couple of years back (and I believe SW Water opened two others in a similar time period). Abberton Reservoir in Essex was MASSIVELY expanded in 2012, as well. On the heels of a huge and multi-decade expansion in reservoir capacity way beyond population growth from the Twenties to the Seventies.
This isn't to say we don't need an expansion of water capacity, but I've read the NIC report (repeatedly). They want water transfers and huge leakage reduction (we leak out at a greater rate than our intake from all reservoirs, which is absurd).
These are resisted by water companies due to commercial risk in relying on each other (transfers) and a lack of increase in regulated capital asset value (for leakage repair); building reservoirs means they can increase prices by RCAV, so that's their go-to, even in water stressed areas where they wouldn't be able to fill those reservoirs.
Anglian Water are in the process of developing 2 new reservoirs in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire to serve 750,000 additional houses in the Peterborough/Cambridge area. Portsmouth Water are also building a new one near Havant.
More to your point of transfers, Anglian have also invested millions in a huge new pipeline from Yorkshire down to East Anglia to aid water transfers.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
The nation didn’t invest enough because of austerity. That’s the number 1 culprit, I suspect.
Which was an exercise of protecting current expenditure at the expense of investment. Labour are about to do the same thing and it's a continuation of what Labour did from 2005 onwards.
I don't see how you've contradicted anything I've said.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
The nation didn’t invest enough because of austerity. That’s the number 1 culprit, I suspect.
Jobs were protected at the expense of investing in productivity. We need to have the courage to do things that make people redundant.
I've always been employed by the private sector. Employer contributions have been: 5%, 5%, 6% and 6%, in that order, in a stakeholder plan. Which I have to match to even get that.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
What hardships you face! It is painful to even read! How you suffer such slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!
Oh, but your basic rate of pay is humongous. So maybe don’t be such a crybaby.
That was a party political broadcast by The Labour Party.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
But there is no "market" when it comes to public sector pay and pensions. It's all settled by unions and pay bodies. I'm sure if it were market led then pensions would be substantially lower and salaries somewhat higher.
There is a labour market. People choose what employers to work for. I can work for the public sector proper, the university sector or go to industry. I have colleagues who have gone back and forth between civil service posts, big companies and start-up opportunities. Several posters here keep going on about rich people fleeing the country: well, that’s happening with doctors going to places like Australia where the pay is better. Even Sue Gray has gone between private and public sector roles!
You haven't addressed the point I made? Can public sector bodies offer variations on pension contributions or salaries? No. Therefore it's not a proper market. If a manager has a good candidate who has a £75k offer with a 5% pension in the private sector but £65k and 27% pension in the public sector can that manager match the private sector offer and cut the pension to 5% to make up the £10k salary difference? No? Then it's not a proper market.
There is no requirement for a labour market to have complete flexibility on every aspect for it to function.
If you and williamglenn think fiddling around with pay versus pension is a good idea, fine. The point I’m arguing is that public sector packages overall need to be made more attractive, contrary to the right-wingers here who complain at any public sector pay award at all.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is jarring to read something, be nodding along, then come to a shuddering halt when they say something you know to be untrue. I've been head down in reservoir stuff for a few years. The last reservoir opened was Hawks Tor, a couple of years back (and I believe SW Water opened two others in a similar time period). Abberton Reservoir in Essex was MASSIVELY expanded in 2012, as well. On the heels of a huge and multi-decade expansion in reservoir capacity way beyond population growth from the Twenties to the Seventies.
This isn't to say we don't need an expansion of water capacity, but I've read the NIC report (repeatedly). They want water transfers and huge leakage reduction (we leak out at a greater rate than our intake from all reservoirs, which is absurd).
These are resisted by water companies due to commercial risk in relying on each other (transfers) and a lack of increase in regulated capital asset value (for leakage repair); building reservoirs means they can increase prices by RCAV, so that's their go-to, even in water stressed areas where they wouldn't be able to fill those reservoirs.
Anglian Water are in the process of developing 2 new reservoirs in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire to serve 750,000 additional houses in the Peterborough/Cambridge area. Portsmouth Water are also building a new one near Havant.
More to your point of transfers, Anglian have also invested millions in a huge new pipeline from Yorkshire down to East Anglia to aid water transfers.
Yeah, they've been arm-twisted a bit. There's a couple of other transfers being begrudgingly implemented, as well, fortunately. There's a couple of crucial major ones that are being resisted assiduously, though, which will prevent the NIC's intention of a National Water Grid. Hopefully they'll be pushed through.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
The nation didn’t invest enough because of austerity. That’s the number 1 culprit, I suspect.
Which was an exercise of protecting current expenditure at the expense of investment. Labour are about to do the same thing and it's a continuation of what Labour did from 2005 onwards.
I don't see how you've contradicted anything I've said.
I wasn’t seeking to contradict what you said. I was expanding on what you said. I agree that Labour would be foolish to make the same error.
I've always been employed by the private sector. Employer contributions have been: 5%, 5%, 6% and 6%, in that order, in a stakeholder plan. Which I have to match to even get that.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
What hardships you face! It is painful to even read! How you suffer such slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!
Oh, but your basic rate of pay is humongous. So maybe don’t be such a crybaby.
That was a party political broadcast by The Labour Party.
There is no money left? Nope, there's plenty of money sloshing around, just that it's in the hands of the fat cats!
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
But there is no "market" when it comes to public sector pay and pensions. It's all settled by unions and pay bodies. I'm sure if it were market led then pensions would be substantially lower and salaries somewhat higher.
I can only speak for the Local Government Pension Scheme but you can choose to opt in or opt out. Most opt in but it's not compulsory and presumably you can take your contribution as additional salary. The same is true of union membership - you can choose not to join a union and keep the money in your salary.
Not sure if the same is true for other public sector pension schemes.
Interesting. Reeves could dig herself out of the political mess of the Winter Fuel Allowance scrapping by using the bump in CGT receipts this year because so many people are selling assets before 30th Oct.
Alternatively, the Telegraph wants to label Labour as stupid.
Three things.
Using windfalls to pay for ongoing commitments is the stupid that Britain has been doing for years, and is part of why we're in this hole.
If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?
Would the apparently inevitable Jenrick/Badenoch government of 2029 reintroduce a winter bonus for all pensioners? Of course they won't.
"If there is a couple of billion more to spend, is replenishing something that is mostly a freebie find for the well-off really the best way of doing it?"
I thought you were all for massive pay rises for doctors and trains drivers ?
I'm in favour of reality and arithmetic.
If the cost to the nation of allowing the strikes to drag on was higher than paying up, then settle the strikes.
If recruitment and retention are a problem, pay more.
The problem with the "they should accept X and be grateful model" is that the government can't enforce it.
Well, up to a point. If recruitment and retention are a problem, make the job more attractive, sure.
But acceding to strikers demands doesn't make fewer strikes. It shows that strikes work and brings them back for more.
While it might be true that some of the strikers have had below inflation pay increases, that's true of everyone. It's bot obvious why private sector workers should accept higher taxes so public sector workers can have higher pay increases than them. Inflation isn't the right comparator: the comparator should be what the given worker might earn by changing jobs.
“Average earnings growth in the whole of the private sector was 6.1% in the year to January, marginally down on 6.2% in the year to December. In the public sector, the rate of growth was 5.9% in the year to January, the same as the revised figure for the year to December.”
But simply looking at the increase in wages doesn't give an accurate figure. Those in the public sector have final salary pension schemes which are tied to those increased earnings, whether on final salary or even an average salary basis. Those in the private sector don't. They will have a defined contribution pension which is far less generous. Those in the public sector have greatly enhanced rights in respect of sick pay, maternity rights, leave, etc Whilst it is true that some of the gold plating has been stripped off these they are still worth a lot of money, particularly for younger women and older workers more prone to lengthy illnesses.
These rights don't come for free. They cost the tax payer money. So the total cost of employing that person is higher than the private sector equivalent.
No one ever talks about the massive pensions you get in the public sector.
Never.
Ignoring pensions when looking at total compensation in the public sector is like ignoring bankers' bonuses.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
Why don’t you trust in the invisible hand of the market? Lots of public sector bodies are struggling to recruit. That means the packages they are offering, pay + pension + everything else, are not attractive. Therefore, you need to make those packages more attractive.
But there is no "market" when it comes to public sector pay and pensions. It's all settled by unions and pay bodies. I'm sure if it were market led then pensions would be substantially lower and salaries somewhat higher.
There is a labour market. People choose what employers to work for. I can work for the public sector proper, the university sector or go to industry. I have colleagues who have gone back and forth between civil service posts, big companies and start-up opportunities. Several posters here keep going on about rich people fleeing the country: well, that’s happening with doctors going to places like Australia where the pay is better. Even Sue Gray has gone between private and public sector roles!
You haven't addressed the point I made? Can public sector bodies offer variations on pension contributions or salaries? No. Therefore it's not a proper market. If a manager has a good candidate who has a £75k offer with a 5% pension in the private sector but £65k and 27% pension in the public sector can that manager match the private sector offer and cut the pension to 5% to make up the £10k salary difference? No? Then it's not a proper market.
There is no requirement for a labour market to have complete flexibility on every aspect for it to function.
If you and williamglenn think fiddling around with pay versus pension is a good idea, fine. The point I’m arguing is that public sector packages overall need to be made more attractive, contrary to the right-wingers here who complain at any public sector pay award at all.
And to make them more attractive the pension should be sacrificed in favour of upfront salary, we shouldn't be putting extra money into public sector remuneration. People want salary today, not 27% contributions for when they're 67.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
The nation didn’t invest enough because of austerity. That’s the number 1 culprit, I suspect.
Jobs were protected at the expense of investing in productivity. We need to have the courage to do things that make people redundant.
What do you understand by 'investment'? Giving people pay rises?
Is that you accepting you were wrong in your comments about redundancies?
What do I understand by investment? It can be done in many ways: new tech, new positions… yes, sometimes higher pay to you get better staff or fill vacancies.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
This paragraph shows what is at stake.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
GDP growth has been entirely down to importing low value workers and throwing bodies at problems, it is the primary reason we've seen such poor per capita growth. Low skilled workers don't increase the overall GDP of the country enough to offset the spending requirements they bring. Fundamentally the nation didn't invest enough from 2005 to now whether public or private.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
The nation didn’t invest enough because of austerity. That’s the number 1 culprit, I suspect.
Spot on. The best you can say for the disaster that was austerity, Osborne et al is that had Labour won in 2010 they probably would have made a similar mistake, albeit to a lesser extent.
https://ukfoundations.co Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy. Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices. With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada. Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia. Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000. At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux. Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million. Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds. The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
It is quite a long read - that's just a brief introduction. But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
Surprised TSE hasn't picked up on this bit of the piece.
...France is notoriously heavily regulated and dominated by labour unions. In 2023, the country was brought to a standstill by strikes against proposals to raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64. French workers have been known to strike by kidnapping their chief executives – a practice that the public there reportedly supports – and strikes are so common that French unions have designed special barbecues that fit in tram tracks so they can grill sausages while they march...
..And yet, despite these high taxes, onerous regulations, and powerful unions, French workers are significantly more productive than British ones – closer to Americans than to us. France’s GDP per capita is only about the same as the UK’s because French workers take more time off on holiday and work shorter hours. What can explain France’s prosperity in spite of its high taxes and high business regulations? France can afford such a large, interventionist state because it does a good job building the things that Britain blocks: housing, infrastructure and energy supply...
The bbqs are an innate part of a strike in France. In the french factories I ran the CGT used to stock up on charcoal for a decent length strike over the summer as part of the pay negotiations.
Being a miserable sod I moved the negotiations to January. Industrial action was a lot shorter as a consequence.
I've always been employed by the private sector. Employer contributions have been: 5%, 5%, 6% and 6%, in that order, in a stakeholder plan. Which I have to match to even get that.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
What hardships you face! It is painful to even read! How you suffer such slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!
Oh, but your basic rate of pay is humongous. So maybe don’t be such a crybaby.
What's fascinating about this post is how braindead posts like this are entirely representive of the limited level of thinking, if you can call it any thinking at all, at the top of government.
No thought at all about how people might change their behaviour off the back of it.
Comments
I see the Techne poll has got one or two a little over-excited because it dares to show a decent position for the Government.
First comment, we can probably forget all the pre-election polls and comparisons with them will be meaningless. Sampling, weighting and other methodologies have been reviewed by all pollsters since the election and the big miss on the Labour vote share (I think down to not properly sampling the anti-Labour Independent vote and a significantly greater level of Labour abstention than anticipated given it seemed the election was already won - shades of 2001).
Second, we have a 4% disparity between Techne and More In Common despite fieldwork across the same period and that explains a four point lead against a twelve point lead.
Third, looking at the Techne numbers (such as they are), I'm struck by 28% Won't Vote which suggests the days of 80% turnouts in GE may be over for now. Labour lead across all age groups (slightly surprising). and the gender gap isn't that great.
Labour will take some comfort from that even those the local by-elections were far less satisfying for the party with losses to the Conservatives and LDs though in Huntingdon the Conservatives ended up third in a seat they held.
Never.
They also get tickets for at least one of the days for Wimbledon, maybe more I don't know. Probably a few freebies at Lords.
I don't imagine anyone begrudges them (but you never know) and it adds to the colour / tradition of any sporting occasion. Probably a fatwa issued for dissing them - like not wearing a poppy.
Trump: I won that debate by a lot.. I walked off the stage and said, “Man, did I beat her”
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1836983643660529878
(So do several others on here)
LLG ended up at 54.1% which was definitely low compared to the polling.
EDIT: 162 calls later and the phone line is officially closed. Was it even ever open? Did anyone get through?
Thank God I didn't listen to @Anabobazina and get rid of my cheque book. Imagine seeing a house purchase fall through for lack of a cheque book?
They don't need to. People are heading for the doors and heading overseas anyway.
https://ukfoundations.co
Here are some facts to set the scene about the state of the British economy.
Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices.
With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families.
Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada.
Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia.
Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000.
At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux.
Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million.
Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds.
The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.
These are not just disconnected observations. They highlight the most important economic fact about modern Britain: that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere...
You spend the rest of your days waiting for the scrape of zimmer frames outside your door....
Unusual for Casino to ride to the defence of downtrodden public servants though - is he going all woke and leftie as he ages?
I'm looking forward to a full 4 years of Labour tears.
Labour would be doing the country a favour if they got rid of final salary pension schemes in the public sector as a quid pro quo for pay rises.
My wife has begun house hunting in Ticino which is a real eyeopener on how expensive property can really be.
But worth the effort.
(Fans of Attlee will not come away particularly happy.)
Most of what they need is in there.
Taking full account of the LDs (because of seats) and Reform (because of votes) is essential to comprehend the current odd political picture, with its soporific mix of indifference, passionate wrong headedness, uselessness from the 2 traditional governing parties, NOTA, solution-free thinking and fun fait antics.
So when I see stories of final salary schemes and contributions of 26% or 35% to pension schemes, plus 30+ days holiday etc, you could understand why I'm not dripping with sympathy especially when my salary has just been frozen and I'm about to be taxed even more so train drivers can get a nice rise.
Poor Cheryl Hines can’t even leave a horse head in his bed, he’d just eat it
https://x.com/lolennui/status/1836966575984828797
Except why do you need a political ops team to tell you that removing WFA is toxic out of all proportion to the cash, you don't take freebies beyond trivialities if 'we are all in this together', the new back room and Number 10 team sorts out its problems in private, and you have to communicate a direction of travel which is coherent to simple people like voters. Mystifying.
Everything that Cameron, Johnson etc etc got is going to given back to the current government.
This is the way of politics. 'Twas ever thus.
Whether you consider that useful - you probably won't. Doesn't mean it isn't.
"To put the shortfall since 2008 into perspective, if Britain had grown in line with its trend between 1979 and 2008, it would be 24.8 percent more productive today. Assuming we continued working the same hours annually, that would mean a GDP per capita of £41,800 instead of £33,500, making the typical family about £8,700 better off before taxes and transfers. Tax revenues would be £1,282 billion instead of £1,027 billion, assuming tax rates are held constant. That would mean that, instead of a deficit of £85 billion, on current spending we would have a surplus of £170 billion, meaning that taxes could be much lower, and public services could be better funded."
I can't speak to what's happening in your world or @Casino_Royale's or whether it's being reflected across other parts of the private sector. There are genuine recruitment problems across elements of local Government for example.
I'd simply point out thinking of the private sector as one thing is as invalid as thinking the same of the public sector. Said sector covers a multitude of activities from local to central Government and as I've said the local Government sector has lost more than a million jobs since 2012 while the actual number of civil servants (those working directly to Government departments) is just over half a million.
If we are talking about the NHS or elements of the armed forces, there may well be efficiencies or savings to be made but the preceding Conservative administrations did the sum total of bugger all from 2010 and of course Covid enforced the sanctity of the frontline NHS staff. IF we have a Government which is predicated to a root-and-branch reform of the NHS with the emphasis on providing strong patient services, I'd be the first to support any cuts or savings which can be produced.
You're the one who has gone on about 50% headcount reductions and I have no clue whether you mean reducing nurses or social care worker numbers by 50% or the idea there are legions of administrators whose numbers could be reduced by investment in technology and automaton to improve business processes - perhaps something the private sector should be getting into.
Now one reason for that is probably a lack of investment - compare local transport in any city outside London and remember that today Krakow announced their own metro system with work starting 2028...
Each of those operates in a different way with different employer and employee contributions. When I was in the Local Government Scheme (LPGS), the contributions increased with seniority so the employees paid in more where the employer paid more for those further down the pay scales. It was, and let's be honest, designed to be part of recruitment and retention.
As an example, we would get newly qualified solicitors or surveyors who would come into the Council, do two or three years while micing work experience with qualifications, CPD and other training and would then leave to go to one of the big private firms having got both the experience and the qualifications and the process would start again.
The older professionals joined usually in their late 40s when settled with children and wanting steady work and the opportunity to build up a pension. They often took a substantial pay cut to achieve that but the Council benefitted from their experience.
I don't mind people having a go at the government; I'll do so myself.
It's the complete lack of interest in what a government with an unassailable majority might usefully do for the next four years, irrespective of wanting to see the back of it.
Your concession of another four years of disaster sounds about right, but I am sorry to learn morale is so low that you are saying it out loud.
Yet, nada
In which case, what is Labour FOR?
Trump can sell as of today, as lock up restrictions end. But only if the price is above $12.
Trump - the majority shareholder - has said he won't sell. But he had to, or the stock would be in single figures. That they are only just above that price suggests there is a degree of skepticism about his assurance. Hard to think why...
You're one of the sensible voices.
One of the reasons the LSE is struggling so badly compared to NYSE is because UK companies are not trusted by investors to deliver capital growth, UK listed companies trade a vastly lower PE ratios than US listed companies, some of that is potentially a bit of under and over pricing but mostly it's because UK companies prefer to deliver dividend growth over capital growth and it is a fundamentally short term way of doing business. The government is much the same, preferring current spending over investment, look at Labour since they got into power, huge increases in current spending from day one by pushing up public sector pay and giving in to the unions. That money is going to come from somewhere and it will mean less investment.
What's depressing is that it was all so damned predictable. Apart from the freebies. I'm not sure anybody saw that coming.
We have had fourteen years of a government that has pandered to Nimbies and short-termists. People who want tax cuts and freebies to benefit them, now, rather than investment to benefit future generations. That's why stuff is falling down and productivity is rubbish.
Gove, I think, got that, but had to back down because his party was trapped with its electorate. I don't know if Labour will get it right, but the early signs are promising and they can't get it as wrong.
I've been head down in reservoir stuff for a few years. The last reservoir opened was Hawks Tor, a couple of years back (and I believe SW Water opened two others in a similar time period). Abberton Reservoir in Essex was MASSIVELY expanded in 2012, as well.
On the heels of a huge and multi-decade expansion in reservoir capacity way beyond population growth from the Twenties to the Seventies.
This isn't to say we don't need an expansion of water capacity, but I've read the NIC report (repeatedly). They want water transfers and huge leakage reduction (we leak out at a greater rate than our intake from all reservoirs, which is absurd).
These are resisted by water companies due to commercial risk in relying on each other (transfers) and a lack of increase in regulated capital asset value (for leakage repair); building reservoirs means they can increase prices by RCAV, so that's their go-to, even in water stressed areas where they wouldn't be able to fill those reservoirs.
Was it the best decision overall financially? Who knows, but no regrets.
The new Government has been politically poor in its first three months but sometimes it's about learning "on the job" and I suspect things will improve over time.
That said, the much bigger problems facing the country are now coming to the surface and the scale of the waste of the Conservative years, particularly after 2015, is also becoming evident.
The rabbit hole of EU membership took up far too much Government time and effort and money.
The other unfortunate truth is if cheap labour is available it will be used whereas the time and effort to improve productivity by looking at business processes, automaton and other areas of performance is rarely used and if firms and councils can simply recruit more pairs of hands to solve a problem that's what they'll do.
As @Big_G_NorthWales's experience also shows, there's a lack of joined up thinking across sectors and industries. We've lived a generation on financial methodone from QE and labour methodone from a cheap supply of workers from Europe and we're now having to face the effects of withdrawal and we've not even done the preliminary thinking of trying to imagine an economy growing without cheap labour.
Oh, but your basic rate of pay is humongous. So maybe don’t be such a crybaby.
It's hard to disagree with the central thesis, though.
...France is notoriously heavily regulated and dominated by labour unions. In 2023, the country was brought to a standstill by strikes against proposals to raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64. French workers have been known to strike by kidnapping their chief executives – a practice that the public there reportedly supports – and strikes are so common that French unions have designed special barbecues that fit in tram tracks so they can grill sausages while they march...
..And yet, despite these high taxes, onerous regulations, and powerful unions, French workers are significantly more productive than British ones – closer to Americans than to us. France’s GDP per capita is only about the same as the UK’s because French workers take more time off on holiday and work shorter hours.
What can explain France’s prosperity in spite of its high taxes and high business regulations? France can afford such a large, interventionist state because it does a good job building the things that Britain blocks: housing, infrastructure and energy supply...
If you go for reservoirs, going for multiple small dispersed reservoirs is ideal (per Dieter Helm); planning is quick and easy (comparatively) and getting them up and running is much quicker and cheaper (as most of them are already dug out, as you say). But the capital value is also comparatively low, so the RCAV is very limited.
Edit: I do agree with the central thesis, though, and the Thames Crossing is particularly egregious. It just disappoints me when important points (such as their central thesis) are impaired by inaccuracies and piling things in from other causes to try to increase weight.
Are we talking about the er..... especially harsh critics of Donald Trump now?
More to your point of transfers, Anglian have also invested millions in a huge new pipeline from Yorkshire down to East Anglia to aid water transfers.
I don't see how you've contradicted anything I've said.
If you and williamglenn think fiddling around with pay versus pension is a good idea, fine. The point I’m arguing is that public sector packages overall need to be made more attractive, contrary to the right-wingers here who complain at any public sector pay award at all.
There's a couple of other transfers being begrudgingly implemented, as well, fortunately. There's a couple of crucial major ones that are being resisted assiduously, though, which will prevent the NIC's intention of a National Water Grid.
Hopefully they'll be pushed through.
Not sure if the same is true for other public sector pension schemes.
What do I understand by investment? It can be done in many ways: new tech, new positions… yes, sometimes higher pay to you get better staff or fill vacancies.
Being a miserable sod I moved the negotiations to January. Industrial action was a lot shorter as a consequence.
No thought at all about how people might change their behaviour off the back of it.