Interesting podcast featuring Mike Madrid, political consultant, on the Latino vote this election and how Harris has turned round her fortunes with this group. 1 minute in.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
We shouldn't have banned fracking.
At the same time, you do need to accept that of all the wells dilled by Cuadrilla/iGas and the like that found commercial quantities of tight oil and gas was... counts... zero.
Now, if people want to spend their money on drilling explorative wells, I don't think the government should be stopping them.
But I would point out that of the 48 shale formations in the US, only seven ended up having significant drilling activity, of which only four and a half have turned out to be economically viable. And of these, the Permian Basin probably accounts for 90% of the activity.
How do you know that UK shale is like the Permian, and not like - say - the Monterey Shale? (The Monterey is estimated to contain about 14bn barrels of oil... but the geology - with many folds, faults and fractures - turned out to be extremely difficult to exploit. It's not enough that there is oil and gas there, it also need to be economically extractable.)
As for the rest of it, of course UK shale might not live up to its potential - that's the nature of commercial exploitation of natural resources the world over. You don't ban something because it might not work (as you sensibly concede). If on the other hand it *does* live up to its potential, there are 37 trillion cubic metres of gas down there.
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
Because the owner of your typical UK fracking firm is a grade A clueless idiot
And?
The ban was a cost-free bit of performative posing from politicians because fracking in the UK had gone nowhere even when there wasn't a ban.
Unbanning fracking would similarly achieve nothing.
The previous position - you can frack if you don’t cause earthquakes and don’t muck up the ground water - had the same effect.
It’s also worth noting that *not finding oil and gas* can be very profitable.
Let’s say I own a drilling/exploration company. I set up another company and get a bunch of people to invest to find gas by fracking. The second company contracts with my original company to drill - who can you trust better than yourself.
Sadly it doesn’t work out. The second company shuts down. My drilling/exploration company has had a good year or two though. Better yet, the Geologist Fairy has just given me a promising new report.
Value for money. Think of all the Russian tank turrets entered into the Turret Lobbing Olympics - all for the price of some nearly time expired munitions.
If only it were nearly time-expired munitions with us. I'm pretty sure the Foreign Secretary has just hosed £600mill in hard cash at him with shit all involvement by the British armament or any other industry.
The NLAWs were pretty close to end of life at least.
Value for money. Think of all the Russian tank turrets entered into the Turret Lobbing Olympics - all for the price of some nearly time expired munitions.
If only it were nearly time-expired munitions with us. I'm pretty sure the Foreign Secretary has just hosed £600mill in hard cash at him with shit all involvement by the British armament or any other industry.
The NLAWs were pretty close to end of life at least.
Being fair, I suppose the £600mill was fairly near the end of its useful life too - it was about to be spent on something by Labour.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
But that's why I think there might have to be a resignation or two
This is now such a mess Labour have to spill some blood to propitiate the angry Gods. A human sacrifice is needed
If it happens it will surely be a lesser minister. Perhaps that daft Education woman with her "but the bribe was too nice to resist!" Taylor Swift tickets
OTOH if they start sacking people where does it end?
As my lefty friend said yesterday, "it's just so fucking stupid"
Your lefty friend again! I can imagine you going round the bars in Camden and drinkers start leaving like there's a flood 'Oh fuck not him again! All he talks about is Starmer' He hobbles you into a corner and bores you to death. I'm out of here.....!'
The Flask in Highgate, actually. Do a great Assyrtiko white
I used to live in one of the tiny cottages next to (and owned by) The Flask on South Grove.
Lovely place but, well, tiny. My enduring memory was a slightly shamefaced return to the Whittington Hospital Emergency Department. 24 hours before I'd been in to have a cast fitted after I'd split my tibia flying a kite a little overenthusiastically on Barmouth beach the previous week.
Having got frustrated with the crutches I had taken to hopping around the cottage, but the doorways were so low I hopped into one and cracked my head open. I think the very same doctor glued my head back together as had put my cast on.
Lovely pub, though.
My friend lives with his partner on the Holly Lodge Estate, do you know it?
It's REALLY odd. A sort of massive 1920s gated community of Tudorbethan mansion blocks designed for "distressed gentlewomen" (they let men in now, as well, if their partners abide there)
They've got a beautiful flat and they pay peppercorn rent, trouble is if they ever move they lose it, and you can't buy them or sell them
Yes I remember it well. Odd place but surprisingly bucolic for that part of London (as Highgate is too)
Value for money. Think of all the Russian tank turrets entered into the Turret Lobbing Olympics - all for the price of some nearly time expired munitions.
If only it were nearly time-expired munitions with us. I'm pretty sure the Foreign Secretary has just hosed £600mill in hard cash at him with shit all involvement by the British armament or any other industry.
The NLAWs were pretty close to end of life at least.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
We shouldn't have banned fracking.
At the same time, you do need to accept that of all the wells dilled by Cuadrilla/iGas and the like that found commercial quantities of tight oil and gas was... counts... zero.
Now, if people want to spend their money on drilling explorative wells, I don't think the government should be stopping them.
But I would point out that of the 48 shale formations in the US, only seven ended up having significant drilling activity, of which only four and a half have turned out to be economically viable. And of these, the Permian Basin probably accounts for 90% of the activity.
How do you know that UK shale is like the Permian, and not like - say - the Monterey Shale? (The Monterey is estimated to contain about 14bn barrels of oil... but the geology - with many folds, faults and fractures - turned out to be extremely difficult to exploit. It's not enough that there is oil and gas there, it also need to be economically extractable.)
As for the rest of it, of course UK shale might not live up to its potential - that's the nature of commercial exploitation of natural resources the world over. You don't ban something because it might not work (as you sensibly concede). If on the other hand it *does* live up to its potential, there are 37 trillion cubic metres of gas down there.
Then you don't understand the meaning of the word "economically".
An economic well is one where the value of the oil and gas extracted exceeds the cost of drilling the well.
That was not the case with the Caudrilla wells. Sure, they produced a small amount of oil and gas, and should not have been capped, but they did not come anywhere near covering their cost of production.
It's really important to understand what decline curves look like for hydraulically fractured wells look like. Do you actually want to know this stuff? I'm happy to explain it to you, but I'm not going to bother if you're not going to let reality intrude on your bubble.
This sums my experience with ChatGPT-o1 rather well...
To put this in simple terms, it's like trying to methodically work on a car with an over-eager, rambunctious assistant who has ADHD and had too much coffee. They're smart, and they're trying to help...
...but instead of bringing you one tool at a time, they keep running out and grabbing a dozen different tools and the kitchen sink, trying to anticipate everything and just bringing confusion.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
We shouldn't have banned fracking.
At the same time, you do need to accept that of all the wells dilled by Cuadrilla/iGas and the like that found commercial quantities of tight oil and gas was... counts... zero.
Now, if people want to spend their money on drilling explorative wells, I don't think the government should be stopping them.
But I would point out that of the 48 shale formations in the US, only seven ended up having significant drilling activity, of which only four and a half have turned out to be economically viable. And of these, the Permian Basin probably accounts for 90% of the activity.
How do you know that UK shale is like the Permian, and not like - say - the Monterey Shale? (The Monterey is estimated to contain about 14bn barrels of oil... but the geology - with many folds, faults and fractures - turned out to be extremely difficult to exploit. It's not enough that there is oil and gas there, it also need to be economically extractable.)
As for the rest of it, of course UK shale might not live up to its potential - that's the nature of commercial exploitation of natural resources the world over. You don't ban something because it might not work (as you sensibly concede). If on the other hand it *does* live up to its potential, there are 37 trillion cubic metres of gas down there.
Then you don't understand the meaning of the word "economically".
An economic well is one where the value of the oil and gas extracted exceeds the cost of drilling the well.
That was not the case with the Caudrilla wells. Sure, they produced a small amount of oil and gas, and should not have been capped, but they did not come anywhere near covering their cost of production.
It's really important to understand what decline curves look like for hydraulically fractured wells look like. Do you actually want to know this stuff? I'm happy to explain it to you, but I'm not going to bother if you're not going to let reality intrude on your bubble.
I am always open to knowing more, but I don't see more than a cigarette-paper's breadth between our two positions. Neither of us agree with a ban. You are skeptical about the chances of UK fracking, and I respect your informed opinion, but I think the potential upside is well worth the risk (a risk taken by companies not the taxpayer).
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
But that's why I think there might have to be a resignation or two
This is now such a mess Labour have to spill some blood to propitiate the angry Gods. A human sacrifice is needed
If it happens it will surely be a lesser minister. Perhaps that daft Education woman with her "but the bribe was too nice to resist!" Taylor Swift tickets
OTOH if they start sacking people where does it end?
As my lefty friend said yesterday, "it's just so fucking stupid"
Your lefty friend again! I can imagine you going round the bars in Camden and drinkers start leaving like there's a flood 'Oh fuck not him again! All he talks about is Starmer' He hobbles you into a corner and bores you to death. I'm out of here.....!'
The Flask in Highgate, actually. Do a great Assyrtiko white
I used to live in one of the tiny cottages next to (and owned by) The Flask on South Grove.
Lovely place but, well, tiny. My enduring memory was a slightly shamefaced return to the Whittington Hospital Emergency Department. 24 hours before I'd been in to have a cast fitted after I'd split my tibia flying a kite a little overenthusiastically on Barmouth beach the previous week.
Having got frustrated with the crutches I had taken to hopping around the cottage, but the doorways were so low I hopped into one and cracked my head open. I think the very same doctor glued my head back together as had put my cast on.
Lovely pub, though.
My friend lives with his partner on the Holly Lodge Estate, do you know it?
It's REALLY odd. A sort of massive 1920s gated community of Tudorbethan mansion blocks designed for "distressed gentlewomen" (they let men in now, as well, if their partners abide there)
They've got a beautiful flat and they pay peppercorn rent, trouble is if they ever move they lose it, and you can't buy them or sell them
Yes I remember it well. Odd place but surprisingly bucolic for that part of London (as Highgate is too)
The weird spooky lane that runs past it and between the two cemeteries. Love that. Uniquely London
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
We shouldn't have banned fracking.
At the same time, you do need to accept that of all the wells dilled by Cuadrilla/iGas and the like that found commercial quantities of tight oil and gas was... counts... zero.
Now, if people want to spend their money on drilling explorative wells, I don't think the government should be stopping them.
But I would point out that of the 48 shale formations in the US, only seven ended up having significant drilling activity, of which only four and a half have turned out to be economically viable. And of these, the Permian Basin probably accounts for 90% of the activity.
How do you know that UK shale is like the Permian, and not like - say - the Monterey Shale? (The Monterey is estimated to contain about 14bn barrels of oil... but the geology - with many folds, faults and fractures - turned out to be extremely difficult to exploit. It's not enough that there is oil and gas there, it also need to be economically extractable.)
As for the rest of it, of course UK shale might not live up to its potential - that's the nature of commercial exploitation of natural resources the world over. You don't ban something because it might not work (as you sensibly concede). If on the other hand it *does* live up to its potential, there are 37 trillion cubic metres of gas down there.
Then you don't understand the meaning of the word "economically".
An economic well is one where the value of the oil and gas extracted exceeds the cost of drilling the well.
That was not the case with the Caudrilla wells. Sure, they produced a small amount of oil and gas, and should not have been capped, but they did not come anywhere near covering their cost of production.
It's really important to understand what decline curves look like for hydraulically fractured wells look like. Do you actually want to know this stuff? I'm happy to explain it to you, but I'm not going to bother if you're not going to let reality intrude on your bubble.
Shhhhhh.
I am trying to get him to invest in this fracking company I'm starting.
Naivety may be a renewable resource, but that's no reason to wreck the stock in hand.
It won't, but it has ratnered Starmer's USP of I am a man of public service, country other party, I am not interested in money.
But it's also true.
The holier than thou thing won't save him if Britain isn't working better in 2028/9. And if it is working better, all this will have been forgotten.
Same as 2020/1, there is no external politics for a while now. If Starmer annoys his MPs enough, they might be able to topple him, but it's harder on the red side than the blue. There's no equivalent of Graham Brady's bulging sack.
It's not polite to say it out loud, but we do have something of an elected dictatorship in the UK. The rest of us might as well take a 2-3 year holiday while they do what they do.
Yes and no. It might have still given him some wiggle room for I am working night and day, public service, public service, public service, things aren't massively better yet, but we are turning it around and look we are better than the Tory lot before.
Now, he can't play that card, he is in the mud with all politicians. So, I think he had to make feel like things are significantly better.
But, yes, PMs have got away before with plenty of self enrichment and scandal if the country is doing well. Nobody really cared about Blair freebie holidays and his wife loving a freebie goodie bag or even some very dodgy donations, because the economy was flying.
Turning around the current situation is much bigger ask than I think all previous PMs since the 1970s have inherited.
But spare a thought for poor Lord Alli who says it's "not nice" to be scrutinised just because youre buying the government
So far he has got off very lightly. The focus has been all on the politicians. People like Lord Ashcroft, the Guardian spent year after year digging through absolutely everything he had ever done.
I mean he's made a load of v popular TV programmes, it's not exactly a secret. Quite amusing all the outraged posters on this site claiming never to have heard of him before.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
But that's why I think there might have to be a resignation or two
This is now such a mess Labour have to spill some blood to propitiate the angry Gods. A human sacrifice is needed
If it happens it will surely be a lesser minister. Perhaps that daft Education woman with her "but the bribe was too nice to resist!" Taylor Swift tickets
OTOH if they start sacking people where does it end?
As my lefty friend said yesterday, "it's just so fucking stupid"
Your lefty friend again! I can imagine you going round the bars in Camden and drinkers start leaving like there's a flood 'Oh fuck not him again! All he talks about is Starmer' He hobbles you into a corner and bores you to death. I'm out of here.....!'
The Flask in Highgate, actually. Do a great Assyrtiko white
I used to live in one of the tiny cottages next to (and owned by) The Flask on South Grove.
Lovely place but, well, tiny. My enduring memory was a slightly shamefaced return to the Whittington Hospital Emergency Department. 24 hours before I'd been in to have a cast fitted after I'd split my tibia flying a kite a little overenthusiastically on Barmouth beach the previous week.
Having got frustrated with the crutches I had taken to hopping around the cottage, but the doorways were so low I hopped into one and cracked my head open. I think the very same doctor glued my head back together as had put my cast on.
Lovely pub, though.
My friend lives with his partner on the Holly Lodge Estate, do you know it?
It's REALLY odd. A sort of massive 1920s gated community of Tudorbethan mansion blocks designed for "distressed gentlewomen" (they let men in now, as well, if their partners abide there)
They've got a beautiful flat and they pay peppercorn rent, trouble is if they ever move they lose it, and you can't buy them or sell them
Yes I remember it well. Odd place but surprisingly bucolic for that part of London (as Highgate is too)
The Estate is great (but I live there so I'm biased)
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
We shouldn't have banned fracking.
At the same time, you do need to accept that of all the wells dilled by Cuadrilla/iGas and the like that found commercial quantities of tight oil and gas was... counts... zero.
Now, if people want to spend their money on drilling explorative wells, I don't think the government should be stopping them.
But I would point out that of the 48 shale formations in the US, only seven ended up having significant drilling activity, of which only four and a half have turned out to be economically viable. And of these, the Permian Basin probably accounts for 90% of the activity.
How do you know that UK shale is like the Permian, and not like - say - the Monterey Shale? (The Monterey is estimated to contain about 14bn barrels of oil... but the geology - with many folds, faults and fractures - turned out to be extremely difficult to exploit. It's not enough that there is oil and gas there, it also need to be economically extractable.)
As for the rest of it, of course UK shale might not live up to its potential - that's the nature of commercial exploitation of natural resources the world over. You don't ban something because it might not work (as you sensibly concede). If on the other hand it *does* live up to its potential, there are 37 trillion cubic metres of gas down there.
Then you don't understand the meaning of the word "economically".
An economic well is one where the value of the oil and gas extracted exceeds the cost of drilling the well.
That was not the case with the Caudrilla wells. Sure, they produced a small amount of oil and gas, and should not have been capped, but they did not come anywhere near covering their cost of production.
It's really important to understand what decline curves look like for hydraulically fractured wells look like. Do you actually want to know this stuff? I'm happy to explain it to you, but I'm not going to bother if you're not going to let reality intrude on your bubble.
Shhhhhh.
I am trying to get him to invest in this fracking company I'm starting.
Naivety may be a renewable resource, but that's no reason to wreck the stock in hand.
Yes, as well to ban it to protect noobs like me. But what about sharp practice in other industries - that still carries on unabated, should we not ban them too? After all, when we've banned all commercial activity, there will be no more fraud! Hooray!!
Those (HS2) options in full: 1) Build HS2 properly so it can serve its strategic purpose for the next century. 2) Make a century-defining historic error, fuck up the growth mission and become an international laughing stock.
Idiot commentary like this makes me doubt the case even more. Exactly the same simplistic fact-light inventive-heavy guff that remainers use.
Infrastructure matters. It really matters. But it is expensive and large projects take more than one parliament (or two, or three...) to plan, let alone build. That makes them very susceptible to politics, because bunging money at people is far easier and has much more obvious and immediate political results.
In Victorian times, there were powerful voices against railway lines being built (or, in some cases, the 'wrong' lines). This led to some stupid situations (Haddon Tunnel, for a small example). But imagine if the naysayers had been able to veto all the lines. Or, in the 1960s and 1970s, motorways had not been built at vast public cost.
HS2 is just another example of this. The alternatives just do not work: as the West Coast Main Line Upgrade showed. You spend the same, or more, at massive disruption and get less. One recent plan would have the West Coast line being totally closed for three months for just some of the work.
The Elizabeth Line was costly, and problematic. Both the cost and problems are being forgotten as Londoners gain a brilliant new railway. The same is true of (say) the Humber Bridge.
I'd have put the Humber Bridge in the white elephant category. It was meant to link to an East Coast Motorway but that was canned centuries ago and elegant though it is I don't think it justifies the cost. Does anyone in Hull really want to go to Immingham or vice versa?
I suppose when the M62 bridge at Goole falls into the river it will allow for a diversion.
The least they could do now is to remove the toll.
If it was in Scotland it would have been de-tolled years ago (as per the Skye bridge). One small benefit of devolution (and the Barnett Formula). Thanks, guys.
Some of the Sgitheanachs wish the Skye Bridge toll could be reinstated for tourists, particularly for those in campervans.
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
Yes, what sort of weirdo has any time for the late Tina Turner in a world which has the fragrant Rachel Reeves in it?
Mind you I hate her for her screechy mangling of Proud Mary, best song ever as performed by CCR.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
Yes, but should I know who Baroness Bra is?
Mrs Foxy finds my lack of interest in famous people quite astonishing, politicians excepted.
It won't, but it has ratnered Starmer's USP of I am a man of public service, country other party, I am not interested in money.
But it's also true.
The holier than thou thing won't save him if Britain isn't working better in 2028/9. And if it is working better, all this will have been forgotten.
Same as 2020/1, there is no external politics for a while now. If Starmer annoys his MPs enough, they might be able to topple him, but it's harder on the red side than the blue. There's no equivalent of Graham Brady's bulging sack.
It's not polite to say it out loud, but we do have something of an elected dictatorship in the UK. The rest of us might as well take a 2-3 year holiday while they do what they do.
Yes and no. It might have still given him some wiggle room for I am working night and day, public service, public service, public service, things aren't massively better yet, but we are turning it around and look we are better than the Tory lot before.
Now, he can't play that card, he is in the mud with all politicians. So, I think he had to make feel like things are significantly better.
But, yes, PMs have got away before with plenty of self enrichment and scandal if the country is doing well. Nobody really cared about Blair freebie holidays and his wife loving a freebie goodie bag or even some very dodgy donations, because the economy was flying.
Turning around the current situation is much bigger ask than I think all previous PMs since the 1970s have inherited.
But spare a thought for poor Lord Alli who says it's "not nice" to be scrutinised just because youre buying the government
So far he has got off very lightly. The focus has been all on the politicians. People like Lord Ashcroft, the Guardian spent year after year digging through absolutely everything he had ever done.
I mean he's made a load of v popular TV programmes, it's not exactly a secret. Quite amusing all the outraged posters on this site claiming never to have heard of him before.
He ran Planet 24 with Sir Bob Geldof who not only wrote and sang on the greatest single of my teenage years but also told people to get their f*cking money out live on BBC TV during his generation defining Liveaid event.
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
Yes, but should I know who Baroness Bra is?
Mrs Foxy finds my lack of interest in famous people quite astonishing, politicians excepted.
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
Yes, what sort of weirdo has any time for the late Tina Turner in a world which has the fragrant Rachel Reeves in it?
Mind you I hate her for her screechy mangling of Proud Mary, best song ever as performed by CCR.
I know he was a total bastard wife beater, but Ike's band was the powerhouse behind her. It was all a bit rubbish when she went solo.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
We shouldn't have banned fracking.
At the same time, you do need to accept that of all the wells dilled by Cuadrilla/iGas and the like that found commercial quantities of tight oil and gas was... counts... zero.
Now, if people want to spend their money on drilling explorative wells, I don't think the government should be stopping them.
But I would point out that of the 48 shale formations in the US, only seven ended up having significant drilling activity, of which only four and a half have turned out to be economically viable. And of these, the Permian Basin probably accounts for 90% of the activity.
How do you know that UK shale is like the Permian, and not like - say - the Monterey Shale? (The Monterey is estimated to contain about 14bn barrels of oil... but the geology - with many folds, faults and fractures - turned out to be extremely difficult to exploit. It's not enough that there is oil and gas there, it also need to be economically extractable.)
As for the rest of it, of course UK shale might not live up to its potential - that's the nature of commercial exploitation of natural resources the world over. You don't ban something because it might not work (as you sensibly concede). If on the other hand it *does* live up to its potential, there are 37 trillion cubic metres of gas down there.
Then you don't understand the meaning of the word "economically".
An economic well is one where the value of the oil and gas extracted exceeds the cost of drilling the well.
That was not the case with the Caudrilla wells. Sure, they produced a small amount of oil and gas, and should not have been capped, but they did not come anywhere near covering their cost of production.
It's really important to understand what decline curves look like for hydraulically fractured wells look like. Do you actually want to know this stuff? I'm happy to explain it to you, but I'm not going to bother if you're not going to let reality intrude on your bubble.
I think Richard, who is our professional expert on the topic, has explained it several times. LG remains unconvinced, so I wouldn’t bother.
It won't, but it has ratnered Starmer's USP of I am a man of public service, country other party, I am not interested in money.
But it's also true.
The holier than thou thing won't save him if Britain isn't working better in 2028/9. And if it is working better, all this will have been forgotten.
Same as 2020/1, there is no external politics for a while now. If Starmer annoys his MPs enough, they might be able to topple him, but it's harder on the red side than the blue. There's no equivalent of Graham Brady's bulging sack.
It's not polite to say it out loud, but we do have something of an elected dictatorship in the UK. The rest of us might as well take a 2-3 year holiday while they do what they do.
Yes and no. It might have still given him some wiggle room for I am working night and day, public service, public service, public service, things aren't massively better yet, but we are turning it around and look we are better than the Tory lot before.
Now, he can't play that card, he is in the mud with all politicians. So, I think he had to make feel like things are significantly better.
But, yes, PMs have got away before with plenty of self enrichment and scandal if the country is doing well. Nobody really cared about Blair freebie holidays and his wife loving a freebie goodie bag or even some very dodgy donations, because the economy was flying.
Turning around the current situation is much bigger ask than I think all previous PMs since the 1970s have inherited.
But spare a thought for poor Lord Alli who says it's "not nice" to be scrutinised just because youre buying the government
So far he has got off very lightly. The focus has been all on the politicians. People like Lord Ashcroft, the Guardian spent year after year digging through absolutely everything he had ever done.
I mean he's made a load of v popular TV programmes, it's not exactly a secret. Quite amusing all the outraged posters on this site claiming never to have heard of him before.
He ran Planet 24 with Sir Bob Geldof who not only wrote and sang on the greatest single of my teenage years but also told people to get their f*cking money out live on BBC TV during his generation defining Liveaid event.
And then it all got given to the Ethiopians to do some lovely ethnic cleansing.
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
Yes, but should I know who Baroness Bra is?
Mrs Foxy finds my lack of interest in famous people quite astonishing, politicians excepted.
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
Yes, but should I know who Baroness Bra is?
Mrs Foxy finds my lack of interest in famous people quite astonishing, politicians excepted.
Michelle Mone.
She might have supplied some of your PPE
Thanks. Not sure I am interested in her gate, unless the rozzers are breaking it down. Then I might watch.
It won't, but it has ratnered Starmer's USP of I am a man of public service, country other party, I am not interested in money.
But it's also true.
The holier than thou thing won't save him if Britain isn't working better in 2028/9. And if it is working better, all this will have been forgotten.
Same as 2020/1, there is no external politics for a while now. If Starmer annoys his MPs enough, they might be able to topple him, but it's harder on the red side than the blue. There's no equivalent of Graham Brady's bulging sack.
It's not polite to say it out loud, but we do have something of an elected dictatorship in the UK. The rest of us might as well take a 2-3 year holiday while they do what they do.
Yes and no. It might have still given him some wiggle room for I am working night and day, public service, public service, public service, things aren't massively better yet, but we are turning it around and look we are better than the Tory lot before.
Now, he can't play that card, he is in the mud with all politicians. So, I think he had to make feel like things are significantly better.
But, yes, PMs have got away before with plenty of self enrichment and scandal if the country is doing well. Nobody really cared about Blair freebie holidays and his wife loving a freebie goodie bag or even some very dodgy donations, because the economy was flying.
Turning around the current situation is much bigger ask than I think all previous PMs since the 1970s have inherited.
But spare a thought for poor Lord Alli who says it's "not nice" to be scrutinised just because youre buying the government
So far he has got off very lightly. The focus has been all on the politicians. People like Lord Ashcroft, the Guardian spent year after year digging through absolutely everything he had ever done.
I mean he's made a load of v popular TV programmes, it's not exactly a secret. Quite amusing all the outraged posters on this site claiming never to have heard of him before.
Well I hadn't heard of him. I see he is famous for pioneering telly made by morons, for morons. Wouldn't in a million years draw any conclusions about your familiarity with his output.
Those (HS2) options in full: 1) Build HS2 properly so it can serve its strategic purpose for the next century. 2) Make a century-defining historic error, fuck up the growth mission and become an international laughing stock.
Idiot commentary like this makes me doubt the case even more. Exactly the same simplistic fact-light inventive-heavy guff that remainers use.
Infrastructure matters. It really matters. But it is expensive and large projects take more than one parliament (or two, or three...) to plan, let alone build. That makes them very susceptible to politics, because bunging money at people is far easier and has much more obvious and immediate political results.
In Victorian times, there were powerful voices against railway lines being built (or, in some cases, the 'wrong' lines). This led to some stupid situations (Haddon Tunnel, for a small example). But imagine if the naysayers had been able to veto all the lines. Or, in the 1960s and 1970s, motorways had not been built at vast public cost.
HS2 is just another example of this. The alternatives just do not work: as the West Coast Main Line Upgrade showed. You spend the same, or more, at massive disruption and get less. One recent plan would have the West Coast line being totally closed for three months for just some of the work.
The Elizabeth Line was costly, and problematic. Both the cost and problems are being forgotten as Londoners gain a brilliant new railway. The same is true of (say) the Humber Bridge.
I'd have put the Humber Bridge in the white elephant category. It was meant to link to an East Coast Motorway but that was canned centuries ago and elegant though it is I don't think it justifies the cost. Does anyone in Hull really want to go to Immingham or vice versa?
I suppose when the M62 bridge at Goole falls into the river it will allow for a diversion.
The least they could do now is to remove the toll.
If it was in Scotland it would have been de-tolled years ago (as per the Skye bridge). One small benefit of devolution (and the Barnett Formula). Thanks, guys.
Some of the Sgitheanachs wish the Skye Bridge toll could be reinstated for tourists, particularly for those in campervans.
And others wish the fecking thing had never been built in the first place.
Oh god, the Puritan Keiths at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
Is it not bad enough the last government dicked around with the duty on beer and has resulted in new lower ABV recipes that taste far worse. The current lot do seem to have an even more puritanical outlook.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
We shouldn't have banned fracking.
At the same time, you do need to accept that of all the wells dilled by Cuadrilla/iGas and the like that found commercial quantities of tight oil and gas was... counts... zero.
Now, if people want to spend their money on drilling explorative wells, I don't think the government should be stopping them.
But I would point out that of the 48 shale formations in the US, only seven ended up having significant drilling activity, of which only four and a half have turned out to be economically viable. And of these, the Permian Basin probably accounts for 90% of the activity.
How do you know that UK shale is like the Permian, and not like - say - the Monterey Shale? (The Monterey is estimated to contain about 14bn barrels of oil... but the geology - with many folds, faults and fractures - turned out to be extremely difficult to exploit. It's not enough that there is oil and gas there, it also need to be economically extractable.)
As for the rest of it, of course UK shale might not live up to its potential - that's the nature of commercial exploitation of natural resources the world over. You don't ban something because it might not work (as you sensibly concede). If on the other hand it *does* live up to its potential, there are 37 trillion cubic metres of gas down there.
Then you don't understand the meaning of the word "economically".
An economic well is one where the value of the oil and gas extracted exceeds the cost of drilling the well.
That was not the case with the Caudrilla wells. Sure, they produced a small amount of oil and gas, and should not have been capped, but they did not come anywhere near covering their cost of production.
It's really important to understand what decline curves look like for hydraulically fractured wells look like. Do you actually want to know this stuff? I'm happy to explain it to you, but I'm not going to bother if you're not going to let reality intrude on your bubble.
I think Richard, who is our professional expert on the topic, has explained it several times. LG remains unconvinced, so I wouldn’t bother.
1. RSC agrees with me that a ban is not justified and that Cuadrilla should not have been forced by the regulator to cap off its Lancashire wells - do you agree? If not, it's you who's the odd one out, so piss off.
2. To steal a PG Wodehouse phrase, it has never been difficult to distinguish between Richard Tyndall with a grievance, and a ray of sunshine. Richard is a North sea man who is extremely aggrieved that his industry sector faces what he perceives to be astronomically more onerous safety regulations than his on-land competitors. In my opinion that massively colours his view on both the viability of fracking and the justification for a ban.
3. It is not a question of me being 'unconvinced' - everyone agrees that uncertainty is an element in every natural resource being exploited, and even if I were convinced of the chances of fracking success being limited, it would remain ludicrous to ban it.
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
But that's why I think there might have to be a resignation or two
This is now such a mess Labour have to spill some blood to propitiate the angry Gods. A human sacrifice is needed
If it happens it will surely be a lesser minister. Perhaps that daft Education woman with her "but the bribe was too nice to resist!" Taylor Swift tickets
OTOH if they start sacking people where does it end?
As my lefty friend said yesterday, "it's just so fucking stupid"
Your lefty friend again! I can imagine you going round the bars in Camden and drinkers start leaving like there's a flood 'Oh fuck not him again! All he talks about is Starmer' He hobbles you into a corner and bores you to death. I'm out of here.....!'
You don't imagine he travels the world because he can write? No, the landlords of Camden clubbed together and sent him off places, just to protect their trade.
He's like one of those incontinent farting dogs. Can you imagine him sitting there with his marionette before they throw him out....
'You take it from me Archle, Starmer and Reeves are getting their comeuppance...."
You, @Anabobazina and @DougSeal really aren't taking Labour's First 100 Day Debacle very well, are you?
I don’t give a fuck about that . What I take personally is the fact that you have no respect for your fellow humans.
I take it personally as you have described me as “subhuman” and unworthy of life. It’s got nothing to do with the travails of a government I voted for without any particular hope for the future.
I’ve been through too much in my life to take people like you picking at others (including my) misfortune as a laugh for your personal amusement. You rejoice in others misfortune. That’s why you fuck me off so much.
When did I ever call you "subhuman"??!!
If I did it was a joke. And I sincerely apologise if it was a joke that went down badly
Fuck off. You know exactly when it was you disingenuous piece of shit. Trying to squirm out of it now is pathetic. If you’re going to make comments like that at least be a man and stand by them. You are a contemptible human being. And despite your sneering metropolitan media sense of superiority I am somehow unworthy to breath your oxygen I am too. You are the worst.
I really have no idea what you're on about
I've just checked vanilla and the only usage by me of "subhuman" is referring to ISIS, which is fair comment, and also the view of far right Israelis towards Palestinians, also fair comment
You will find @Gardenwalker calling Sarah Vine "subhuman", which does seem a bit strong
Really?
She married Michael Gove for Christ's sake. She if not actually subhuman, then certainly subhuman adjacent.
One of my oldest female friends is very close to Sarah Vine. Apparently, she is really nice. And great for gossip
Michael Portillo did the best dismantling job I've ever seen done by a politician on a 'journalist'. She is a real piece of work. ....
Portillo and Abbott were a double act and Vine was in the studio with them and Andrew Neil. They read out an article about Ed Miliband at home with his wife that she'd written and Portillo asked if she didn't feel ashamed writing something like that when her husband is himself a politician?
She at least blushed. But it was quite disgusting and personal and she knew it. Abbott couldn't bring herself to say anything but Portillo to his credit said it was sickening.
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
Exactly what I was about to say. Stamping on puppies law next (yes, I know Leon would like that)? Ban Yorkshire puddings? Replace Saturdays with another Monday?
This has got to be expectations management. They're putting this out there so that we're all eternally grateful when the pubs are allowed to continue plying their trade.
It won't, but it has ratnered Starmer's USP of I am a man of public service, country other party, I am not interested in money.
But it's also true.
The holier than thou thing won't save him if Britain isn't working better in 2028/9. And if it is working better, all this will have been forgotten.
Same as 2020/1, there is no external politics for a while now. If Starmer annoys his MPs enough, they might be able to topple him, but it's harder on the red side than the blue. There's no equivalent of Graham Brady's bulging sack.
It's not polite to say it out loud, but we do have something of an elected dictatorship in the UK. The rest of us might as well take a 2-3 year holiday while they do what they do.
Yes and no. It might have still given him some wiggle room for I am working night and day, public service, public service, public service, things aren't massively better yet, but we are turning it around and look we are better than the Tory lot before.
Now, he can't play that card, he is in the mud with all politicians. So, I think he had to make feel like things are significantly better.
But, yes, PMs have got away before with plenty of self enrichment and scandal if the country is doing well. Nobody really cared about Blair freebie holidays and his wife loving a freebie goodie bag or even some very dodgy donations, because the economy was flying.
Turning around the current situation is much bigger ask than I think all previous PMs since the 1970s have inherited.
But spare a thought for poor Lord Alli who says it's "not nice" to be scrutinised just because youre buying the government
So far he has got off very lightly. The focus has been all on the politicians. People like Lord Ashcroft, the Guardian spent year after year digging through absolutely everything he had ever done.
I mean he's made a load of v popular TV programmes, it's not exactly a secret. Quite amusing all the outraged posters on this site claiming never to have heard of him before.
He ran Planet 24 with Sir Bob Geldof who not only wrote and sang on the greatest single of my teenage years but also told people to get their f*cking money out live on BBC TV during his generation defining Liveaid event.
And then it all got given to the Ethiopians to do some lovely ethnic cleansing.
Live Aid was some years before he joined up with Geldof.
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
Exactly what I was about to say. Stamping on puppies law next (yes, I know Leon would like that)? Ban Yorkshire puddings? Replace Saturdays with another Monday?
This has got to be expectations management. They're putting this out there so that we're all eternally grateful when the pubs are allowed to continue plying their trade.
I dunno
They are so terribly shit I wonder if they are panicking about their poll numbers and they've looked at the polls on the smoking-outside-ban - and they've decided Fuck it, go for the curtain-twitching puritan vote
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
Too right! Pepsi is much better!
Even Sunak had his issues with it. He really liked the Mexican stuff.
The main issue is not speed (it seldom is, with HS2) but capacity.
The point is, the Elizabeth Line does not have the capacity to accommodate everyone getting off HS2 at OOC and continuing into Central London – and nor do its high demand Central London stations (Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street).
If you were the only passenger on HS2 and you were going from Manchester to Central London (Bond Street, say) you might not be particularly inconvenienced by getting off at Old Oak Common and getting on the Elizabeth Line – indeed, you might choose to do that anyway*. But if EVERYONE has to get off at OOC, the result is huge queues on the Elizabeth Line, with the result that in practice, your journey to Central London is much longer as you cannot get on the first Elizabeth Line train that comes (as well as congestion on other modes).
(Indeed, the same would be true if we had Euston but no OOC. The reason HS2 has both Euston AND OOC is to spread out the demand on London’s network rather than having it all land in one place.)
While it’s hard to place a specific value on journey times, due to the point about where in London your destination is, HS2’s demand modelling (referenced by Oakervee, see below) shows that two thirds of HS2 passengers prefer Euston, while one-third prefer OOC. Therefore, by abandoning Euston, we would be providing disbenefits to two-thirds of passengers.
*Lets assume interchange times at Euston and OOC are equivalent; a ten minute trip from OOC to Bond Street on the Elizabeth Line is comparable to what it would take on the tube, and you save yourself the additional time on HS2 between OOC and Euston. Of course, there are other destinations in Central London which would be more easily reached from Euston than OOC (Charing Cross, for example), for which it would be less convenient to get off at OOC.
Perhaps these issues could be mitigated by moving lots of things to Old Oak Common? The HoC refurb would be a lot cheaper if it was in Acton, and we'd save a lot on MPs housing allowances.
Is there really a capacity issue wrt Crossrail and HS2 passengers disembarking. HS2 is 500 seats a train I think? Crossrail trains are bigger than that iirc. Obviously there will be other passengers already on Crossrail - but how many? Are Crossrail trains full already?
My experience of travelling on the Elizabeth line suggests that that would be a big concern, but whether my observation is correct is another matter.
The Elizabeth line seems also to have quite a lot of issues. I'd say that the majority of the times I've used it there has been something or other - although that seems to be lessening over time.
From observation, absolutely huge numbers of people use the Elizabeth line.
Indeedy. It's striking how busy it is, even off-peak.
There's also something psychological that's changed about the geography of this bit of London. Stepping on a train in the suburbs of Romford and stepping off in the West End ties one to London in a way that changing at Liverpool Street doesn't. Rail lines are magic like that in a way that roads aren't.
But yes- whatever problems Britain has, an excess of railway lines isn't one of them.
The Elizabeth Line has comfortably exceeded all the benefits set out in its business case.
It is an astoundingly successful project that has helped move London forward.
It's a pretty good demonstration of how much pent-up demand there is for new infrastructure in Britain, as the foundations piece shared the other day argues.
The piece in question is the same ideology we got from policy exchange, but adapted to read as 'research', as policy exchange currently have no influence on government. The description of the problem is very good. They are correct that the planning system is in a mess but they are wrong about the answer, ie to 'scrap planning', on the assumption that inrastructure, housing etc just builds itself due to 'the release of pent up demand'. This is a re-emerging fantasy on the post Thatcherite right. The world doesn't work like that and I think you can only honestly believe this position if you have absolutely no credible experience of the real world. Still the idea keeps returning, the people change, but the idea has an irresistable quality. In every modern economy the state sets the rules and is the main enabler.
I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
So much to unpack in this one superb comment
To complete my mental image here, I need to know whether we're talking Vespa, e-scooter or mobility scooter (or, indeed, a good old foot powered one like my kids have)
I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
So much to unpack in this one superb comment
To complete my mental image here, I need to know whether we're talking Vespa, e-scooter or mobility scooter (or, indeed, a good old foot powered one like my kids have)
I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
So much to unpack in this one superb comment
To complete my mental image here, I need to know whether we're talking Vespa, e-scooter or mobility scooter (or, indeed, a good old foot powered one like my kids have)
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
Yes, what sort of weirdo has any time for the late Tina Turner in a world which has the fragrant Rachel Reeves in it?
Mind you I hate her for her screechy mangling of Proud Mary, best song ever as performed by CCR.
I know he was a total bastard wife beater, but Ike's band was the powerhouse behind her. It was all a bit rubbish when she went solo.
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant I know and there was a New Zealand couple on the next table. They started talking to me about how long I'd been coming here and is it true Tina Turner lived here.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
Yes, what sort of weirdo has any time for the late Tina Turner in a world which has the fragrant Rachel Reeves in it?
Mind you I hate her for her screechy mangling of Proud Mary, best song ever as performed by CCR.
I know he was a total bastard wife beater, but Ike's band was the powerhouse behind her. It was all a bit rubbish when she went solo.
He(?) seemed a usual run of the mill dimwitted underpaid troll, but more than 48 hours is the best record in over two years.
The Saturday trolls remind me of tier 9 football clubs. TomW is the first to reach the Second Round of the FA Cup.
I like them. They are nearly always weirdly nice about ME - apart from one who went all @DougSeal - and regarded me as Satan
Which is still flattering, better to be talked about, etc
Satan never publicly wished me harm, unlike you. Sorry to disappoint you but I am still here sharing a planet with you. The subhuman scum isn’t going anywhere yet.
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
You know when we all used to have a little bit of a chuckle and a joke about Starmer being a humourless sod?
Maybe he actually is a humourless sod, who really does get his kicks out of being solemn and telling people what they can or can’t do and banning stuff and telling people it’s best for them? And that’s who we’ve elected, and we’re in for five years of misery and being told off and being given charmless Arsenal anecdotes?
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
Do you think Starmers ever been drunk in his life?
I'd much rather have RAYNER as PM, as at least she knows how to have a good time and enjoy herself
"The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking"
Oh FFS. The harmful drinking is being done at home on the sofa at wine o'clock not at 11:30pm on the Dog and Duck.
However, a Department for Health spokesman denied any changes to licensing hours were being considered.
As usual, PB is flying off at the deep end I suspect. It seems to be a sanction to address antisocial behaviour at problem late-night venues, if anything. Let’s see.
He(?) seemed a usual run of the mill dimwitted underpaid troll, but more than 48 hours is the best record in over two years.
The Saturday trolls remind me of tier 9 football clubs. TomW is the first to reach the Second Round of the FA Cup.
I like them. They are nearly always weirdly nice about ME - apart from one who went all @DougSeal - and regarded me as Satan
Which is still flattering, better to be talked about, etc
Satan never publicly wished me harm, unlike you. Sorry to disappoint you but I am still here sharing a planet with you. The subhuman scum isn’t going anywhere yet.
Look, I get that you're deeply offended, by something or other (I genuinely don't know)
And - if I have gratuitously offended you - I am happy to apologise, if you only show me what I did. So, just tell me, and then I can say sorry, and that will lower your blood pressure
It's what Labour do. It was behaviour like this that made Kinnock a hero. This is much better than the over stage managed stuff that used to pass for Tory Party Conferences
There is a remarkable gender split in the latest NBC poll. Trump leads men by 12%. Harris leads women by 21%.
Women vote more than men. So the overall Harris lead in the electorate is not less than 5%. That is enough for swing states to fall.
For Trump to pull back, he needs to start winning women over Harris' offer to them. Sorry, but I just don't see that happening.
I hadn't realized there was such a stark gender gap, based on your comment I found following link, you'd have thought this would be reflected in the national polling as it would give Harris a 16% lead exc DKs and 3rd candidates. There must be a lot of shy female GOP voters, https://cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/voters/gender-differences-voter-turnout#NPGX
I listened to the whole thing. I was driving on my scooter with earphones and I thought she was excellent. Almost brought a lump to my throat. So well constructed. If she isn't next Labour leader it'll be because she's no longer around
Biggest problem at the moment is not people drinking too much, its the widespread and copious use of coke across society. Its totally unmissable if you go out anywhere.
That’s a value judgement, that it’s a “problem”. Is it any worse than booze health-wise? Tobacco?
It's what Labour do. It was behaviour like this that made Kinnock a hero. This is much better than the over stage managed stuff that used to pass for Tory Party Conferences
This is their first Conference after winning a trillion seat majority. This is not expected, to put it mildly
If Lab continue to struggle it won't be Keir in trouble straightaway. Leaders tend to throw someone else overboard first either an advisor (e.g. May with Hill and Timothy) or a cabinet member (Truss with Kwarteng).
My guess is Sue Gray will be ditched, if necessary. I think she'll be gone by July 26
The PB lefties seem to be taking the Total Shittiness of the Starmer Government quite badly
I guess it must be painful tho. 14 years of hope and waiting and all that patiently invested faith, and then… THIS
It's not that bad because I didn't have high hopes going in to it.
Also, so far, the largest decision of substance has been on cutting WFA, and given where I think the country is at the moment - budget deficit too large, but need to increase investment spending - that definitely has the air of a decision that was so right it should have been done years ago.
Obviously it's great that PB Righties have been able to take to the pleasures of opposition so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. Right-wingers railing at a Labour government just feels like the natural order of things. You Righties were desperate to be in opposition for years.
Yes some truth in that. Being in opposition is quite fun - you can really put the boot in. And Labour present quite the target
I’m still surprised by the tantrum-throwing despondency of some PB lefties, however
Their plight is explained by Kubler Ross on stages of grief. KR is about responses to SHOCK, not death. It's about how people in their 40s with no apparent health issues respond to "I wouldn't start reading any long novels" diagnoses. That's not the Tory party, which died in a hospice in July, to almost everyone's relief, after 3 years in and out of hospital. Not a shock. Starmer and Co's couldn't-make-it-up levels of cynical incompetence: huge shock, not just to the left but to anyone who was sort of hoping to be competently governed for five minutes. But the non-left have the compensation of at least getting a good laugh out of it.
Yes, you could be right
Also I am getting serious anger at HMG from my lefty friends. Last night (as I mentioned on here) one of my oldest Labour-voting friends was spitting venom about the stupidity of Starmer and Co, he didn't even wait for me to tease him about it: he launched right in. And a glimpse at the BTL comments on the Guardian, today, beneath the rolling blog about Reeves, offers quite the spectacle. The Labour lefties are furious about the austerity and WFA and all that, and the Blairities are furious about the grift and incompetence
" difficult decisions" Rachel Reeves has taken
-should I get the dress or the trouser suit ? - should I ask Lord Alli to buy the shoes too ?
New
Reeves enjoyed a week holiday in Padstow in July gifted to her by Richard Parker, Labour donor and now mayor of West Midlands and while logging her stay, she omitted her family members enjoyed the stay which benefit has to be declared
This is possibly going to end in resignations
I suspect not.
As you conceded in our exchange yesterday, the problem isn't the gifts themselves which probably aren't that different to those received by Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers in the past (perhaps not the scale of them) when the order of the day was either Gannex raincoats or shooting parties on a friend's estate.
The two problems are first the commitments made by Starmer and others as to how they would comport themselves in Government which were long on generalities ("cleaning up Government") and short on specifics and which has left them open to the slightest receipt of the smallest thing being a case of grift or venality.
Second is the juxtaposition of accepting freebies, going on free holidays and the rest at a time when many pensioners are going to lose the winter fuel allowance and the cliff-edge nature of the means testing has a number of pensioners losing the £250 on the basis of having income less than £5 over the threshold.
Both are unnecessary self-inflicted wounds which, you could argue, is part of the learning process about being in Government but it's given the Tories, who, let's face it, have had a pretty rotten last couple of years, something to smile about (or it will until we seek the parade of the unelectables next week).
What I find strange is no one in Labour saw or realised what the public reaction would be. Absent the wfa debacle, the grift itself is probably not too serious - the Ecclestone affair was far worse. The wfa announcement was just plain stupid - if you do something like this, the losers will be the first to scream and scream loud and long.
I suspect the wfa announcement will be tempered in the Budget by some tapering of the cliff edge and perhaps some changes on who is involved.
Love to know who you would temper the wfa announcement - there are very limited datasets available hence the switch to pension credit as it's the only other dataset that is usable...
Council House bands. A-C
Crude and doesn't help that much as 60% are in bands A-C.
Difficult to argue that band D and above need it, even if they are asset rich and cash poor.
Now tell me which households in bands A-C have people who qualify for it?
And how you are going to administer the payments because you've now got councils involved...
Every pensioner who recieves a state pension has a national insurance number, a date of birth and an address. Each of those addresses has a council tax band, which are maintained by the Valuation Office not local councils. Its a relatively simple data merge.
As I said, crude. Imperfect certainly but it would solve 98% of the problem.
No doubt there will be load of whataboutery but never let the perfect by the enemy of the good.
Btw single person discount to stay, if not already noted. Huzzah from saddo loners like me.
And an excellent guardian comment: labour winning power is the dog which chases cars catching up with a car.
Get it done, raising the money with a tax on the Chiltern Tories who made the most unneeded bit cost so much by insisting we made a largely flat railway line go through a tunnel.
Joking of course, but it is incredibly stupid not building the bits that genuinely make a difference to capacity on overstretched northern lines and have the potential to provide vital links, because David Cameron and his MPs wasted billions ensuring people they met at the farmers market would never have to listen to trains like common plebs.
Or perhaps it was just never a particularly good project, and has been sold on the basis of being 'infrastructure' because we 'need infrastructure', when actually it has all the appropriateness in serving our national infrastructure needs as handing a deep sea diver a toaster and telling him use it to breathe underwater.
There's an argument they could have chosen a better route, sure and have run it better. But a new North to South rail lines that looks pretty much like HS2 - which might as well be High Speed as that's not the main reason for the cost, is absolutely necessary (as are the others that were supposed to link to it) unless you want the railways to become close to unusable before too long.
If we scrap it we'll end up having to build it at some point - just 20-30 years later than we should have and long after it was necessary.
It was always missold as speed rather than capacity - if you take the fast few stop intercity services off the existing lines you can run more frequent local trains and increase capacity. Otherwise you're looking at managing demand and ever more broken railways.
It's what that idiot Sunak and the Tories completely failed to understand when they 'scrapped it'. By doing so they were condemning the railways to exactly the disastrous problems they claimed the saved money would fix.
It is those who oppose it and have tried to stymie it who have been both incredibly stupid and probably set back rail transport in this country back decades.
Meh. I appreciate your passion, but it's an awful lot of fuss over a single railway line that will have no impact on the vast majority of peoples' lives, whether it's about speed or capacity.
I also disbelieve profoundly in the power of new infrascture to revive economies. It won't. Revive the economies, then build the infrastructure - it will be clear what is needed, and potentially the private sector will build it.
Go on then - how do we revive the economy of the North without investment?
But again, there you change the goalposts - you realise it sounds silly to say 'without HS2' so you generalise it to 'investment', as if HS2 *is* the personification of all infrastructure spending - except it isn't. It is one, very expensive and very geographically-limited project, that even in the most wildly optimistic projections, will not 'revive the economy of the North'.
Since you asked however, there are many things without 'investment' that we can do to revive the economy of the North, which is (or was) primarily an industrial economy.
1. Increase the supply of low cost energy to businesses until it is as cheap here as it is in the USA - it is wholly uneconomical to run a business that makes things in the UK. 2. Support businesses with the tax conditions necessary for them to thrive - low Corporation Tax being one that springs readily to mind, as well as specific tax incentives to get high quality manufacturing businesses off the ground. 3. Take justified steps to protect British manufacturing companies from their Chinese and other global rivals' attempts to compete unfairly with them, including reciprocal tariffs, penalties for dishonestly acquired IP, etc.
1) So how would you get that low cost energy? 2) then how do you kick off high quality manufacturing because that also requires demand and where is that going to come from. Now granted you could import companies by lowering corporation tax but they will leave as soon as you start to increase the tax rates so it's only a temporary solution. 3) so that will keep the UK domestic market but how would you stop EU countries from purchasing the Chinese knock offs at a cheaper price.
1. We have had many conversations about this - they are well rehearsed. Suffice it to say are a nation abundant in energy sources - gas, oil, tidal, energy-from-waste, and that's before you get to small reactors. We do almost everything possible to create dysfunction and perverse incentives that ensure that energy is exorbitant here. Indeed many see the high price of energy as a moral mission.
2. The demand has not gone anywhere; the things just aren't being made here, for the reasons I outlined (unless I misunderstood in what sense you meant demand).
3. We're not owed lunch - we must create the necessary support for our businesses to thrive, and then have them compete on world markets and succeed or fail. There are some things we're actually already pretty good at that have high growth potential (drugs, cosmetics), others we've historically been good at that have high potential to do well (high quality garments, yarns and fabrics, leathers).
Gas and oil isn’t cheap when the other option is selling it on the global market at the current market price. As for tidal and energy from waste how does that work unless the Government invests in it (which to me would be infrastructure investment).
As for your other points replace we are good at with we were good at…
If that were an inviolable truth, prices of gas and oil would be the same in the US as they are here. They aren't, and I assume that is because supply is enough to export and to sell domestically at an attractive rate. Some could give us a more detailed explanation I'm sure.
I find your latter 'point' rather asinine. I don't get the feeling you particularly like the economy or want it to succeed.
@Luckyguy1983 As long as we import *some* gas, domestic producers will be able to charge a penny below the import price.
I think the USA is a net exporter, so the competition is all within the US, and producers need to factor the costs of exporting (as compressing and exporting etc)
S
I don't think it is implausible that this country could become a net exporter of oil and gas. The idea of fracking working here is poo-poohed with great gusto, but note the fracking ban. Since when did you need to ban something that has no chance of getting off the ground?
You amuse me, you're all in favour of land being used for fracking to generate energy . . . but if land gets turned to solar farms or wind farms to generate energy then you scream that its disgraceful as that land should be used to produce food and nothing else.
Why is it OK for people to use their own land for fracking to generate energy, but not OK to use their own land for solar or wind if that's what they want to do with it?
Oh god, the puritan Keith is at it again! Even @Anabobazina has got to be getting sick of this government?
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 30m 🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
This...
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
Exactly what I was about to say. Stamping on puppies law next (yes, I know Leon would like that)? Ban Yorkshire puddings? Replace Saturdays with another Monday?
This has got to be expectations management. They're putting this out there so that we're all eternally grateful when the pubs are allowed to continue plying their trade.
It looks like the traditional 'health minister floats preventative health policy options health experts have offered him to get his message that we're all too pissed/fat/on the ciggies across'.
Though from the article he's not talking really about normal pub hours but the late night licencing laws Labour brought in - and which lots of Tories used to oppose.
In the article, a DoH spokesperson denies they're looking at changing licencing hours - which probably means tougher enforcement on late night licence conditions to crack down on places deemed to be targeting getting people blotto into the early hours.
Annoying and puritan as that is, it's probably a lot less unpopular than one would like to think. But of course that's a lot more interesting to write up as a 'war on pubs'.
Does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing?
This is the full quote from Gwynne. “These are discussions that we have got to have – even if it’s just about tightening up on some of the hours of operation; particularly where there are concerns that people are drinking too much.”
Infer as you will. To me it looks like a sanction for problem venues. But, as I say, let’s see.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUphnPkEdCk
He(?) seemed a usual run of the mill dimwitted underpaid troll, but more than 48 hours is the best record in over two years.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/02/09/end-fracking-cuadrilla-ordered-abandon-last-two-viable-wells/
As for the rest of it, of course UK shale might not live up to its potential - that's the nature of commercial exploitation of natural resources the world over. You don't ban something because it might not work (as you sensibly concede). If on the other hand it *does* live up to its potential, there are 37 trillion cubic metres of gas down there.
Yes I told them it was true and they seemed very excited and I pointed in the general direction of where she lived. I've no idea what excited them about the late Tina Turner but when they left another couple sitting nearby said they couldn't help but overhear and they asked if it was possible to get to the house!
I told them they could get to the gate but it's just a gate. More interesting I said is that Baroness Bra lives right next door. So if you want you can see both gates side by side. One then produced a phone and asked if I could point to it on the map.
Nowt so queer as folk!
It’s also worth noting that *not finding oil and gas* can be very profitable.
Let’s say I own a drilling/exploration company. I set up another company and get a bunch of people to invest to find gas by fracking. The second company contracts with my original company to drill - who can you trust better than yourself.
Sadly it doesn’t work out. The second company shuts down. My drilling/exploration company has had a good year or two though. Better yet, the Geologist Fairy has just given me a promising new report.
Better start another company….
He changed his avatar from that one of Putin that looked like an overgrown Womble several years ago so it seems unlikely.
An economic well is one where the value of the oil and gas extracted exceeds the cost of drilling the well.
That was not the case with the Caudrilla wells. Sure, they produced a small amount of oil and gas, and should not have been capped, but they did not come anywhere near covering their cost of production.
It's really important to understand what decline curves look like for hydraulically fractured wells look like. Do you actually want to know this stuff? I'm happy to explain it to you, but I'm not going to bother if you're not going to let reality intrude on your bubble.
To put this in simple terms, it's like trying to methodically work on a car with an over-eager, rambunctious assistant who has ADHD and had too much coffee. They're smart, and they're trying to help...
...but instead of bringing you one tool at a time, they keep running out and grabbing a dozen different tools and the kitchen sink, trying to anticipate everything and just bringing confusion.
https://x.com/BenjaminDEKR/status/1838291233866702853
I am trying to get him to invest in this fracking company I'm starting.
Naivety may be a renewable resource, but that's no reason to wreck the stock in hand.
Putin needs to give him temporary stay on his conscription to the Ukraine frontline for lasting so long and being less obvious.
Aaron Bastani
@AaronBastani
Quick catch up with the courageous young man who drew attention to the British government’s continuing arms sales to Israel today.
My privilege to buy him a beer. Responsible citizens need to do everything we can to stop an escalation in West Asia.
https://x.com/AaronBastani/status/1838283357022478366
Mind you I hate her for her screechy mangling of Proud Mary, best song ever as performed by CCR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAI_-QcIumU
Mrs Foxy finds my lack of interest in famous people quite astonishing, politicians excepted.
She might have supplied some of your PPE
LG remains unconvinced, so I wouldn’t bother.
Politics UK
@PolitlcsUK
·
30m
🚨 NEW: The government is considering forcing pubs to close their doors early to target harmful drinking
Which is still flattering, better to be talked about, etc
Also, before any of this comes in,
Fifty pubs a month shut in first half of year in England and Wales, figures show
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/23/fifty-pubs-a-month-shut-in-first-half-of-year-in-england-and-wales-figures-show
2. To steal a PG Wodehouse phrase, it has never been difficult to distinguish between Richard Tyndall with a grievance, and a ray of sunshine. Richard is a North sea man who is extremely aggrieved that his industry sector faces what he perceives to be astronomically more onerous safety regulations than his on-land competitors. In my opinion that massively colours his view on both the viability of fracking and the justification for a ban.
3. It is not a question of me being 'unconvinced' - everyone agrees that uncertainty is an element in every natural resource being exploited, and even if I were convinced of the chances of fracking success being limited, it would remain ludicrous to ban it.
This...
This has to be a joke. Surely. Are they TRYING to be the most hated government in history, and in record time?
Portillo and Abbott were a double act and Vine was in the studio with them and Andrew Neil. They read out an article about Ed Miliband at home with his wife that she'd written and Portillo asked if she didn't feel ashamed writing something like that when her husband is himself a politician?
She at least blushed. But it was quite disgusting and personal and she knew it. Abbott couldn't bring herself to say anything but Portillo to his credit said it was sickening.
I'd much rather have RAYNER as PM, as at least she knows how to have a good time and enjoy herself
Kamala Harris Net Favorables:
(Sep 9 ---> Sep 19)
MI: +1 ---> +10
GA: +7 ---> +8
MN: +6 ---> +7
PA: -1 ---> +7
AZ: +8 ---> +6
FL: +1 ---> +4
NV: +6 ---> +3
WI: +5 ---> +3
NC: +4 ---> +2
Redfield / Sept 19, 2024 / n=9794
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1838301929329303556
This has got to be expectations management. They're putting this out there so that we're all eternally grateful when the pubs are allowed to continue plying their trade.
(Sep 9 ---> Sep 19)
GA: +9 ---> +8
FL: +5 ---> +7
WI: -7 ---> +3
MI: -3 ---> Even
PA: -9 ---> Even
NV: +4 ---> -1
NC: +1 ---> -1
AZ: +3 ---> -2
MN: -9 ---> -9
Redfield / Sept 19, 2024 / n=9794
Redfield tends slightly GOP, I think ?
They are so terribly shit I wonder if they are panicking about their poll numbers and they've looked at the polls on the smoking-outside-ban - and they've decided Fuck it, go for the curtain-twitching puritan vote
JD Vance Net Favorables:
(Sep 9 ---> Sep 19)
FL: -2 ---> +5
GA: +2 ---> +2
NC: -1 ---> -2
WI: -7 ---> -3
PA: -5 ---> -5
NV: -5 ---> -7
MI: -8 ---> -8
AZ: -3 ---> -9
MN: -9 ---> -9
Tim Walz Net Favorables:
(Sep 9 ---> Sep 19)
MI: +8 ---> +16
GA: +15 ---> +15
MN: +15 ---> +15
PA: Even ---> +12
WI: +15 ---> +10
NC: +14 ---> +10
NV: +9 ---> +10
FL: +9 ---> +7
AZ: +8 ---> +6
Women vote more than men. So the overall Harris lead in the electorate is not less than 5%. That is enough for swing states to fall.
For Trump to pull back, he needs to start winning women over Harris' offer to them. Sorry, but I just don't see that happening.
The description of the problem is very good. They are correct that the planning system is in a mess but they are wrong about the answer, ie to 'scrap planning', on the assumption that inrastructure, housing etc just builds itself due to 'the release of pent up demand'. This is a re-emerging fantasy on the post Thatcherite right. The world doesn't work like that and I think you can only honestly believe this position if you have absolutely no credible experience of the real world. Still the idea keeps returning, the people change, but the idea has an irresistable quality.
In every modern economy the state sets the rules and is the main enabler.
Oh FFS. The harmful drinking is being done at home on the sofa at wine o'clock not at 11:30pm on the Dog and Duck.
Starmer stays as long as he wants.
Blair was eventually forced from office, unwillingly
It is harder in Labour, but not impossible
"A joyous moment when David Lammy & Rachel Reeves show their frustration at Conference, when members protest at Winter Fuel Cuts... 😅"
Wow
https://x.com/AvonandsomerRob/status/1838291638302761074
Maybe he actually is a humourless sod, who really does get his kicks out of being solemn and telling people what they can or can’t do and banning stuff and telling people it’s best for them? And that’s who we’ve elected, and we’re in for five years of misery and being told off and being given charmless Arsenal anecdotes?
It could be a long five years….
As usual, PB is flying off at the deep end I suspect. It seems to be a sanction to address antisocial behaviour at problem late-night venues, if anything. Let’s see.
And - if I have gratuitously offended you - I am happy to apologise, if you only show me what I did. So, just tell me, and then I can say sorry, and that will lower your blood pressure
https://cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/voters/gender-differences-voter-turnout#NPGX
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/23/pubs-to-call-last-orders-early-under-labour-nanny-state/
Does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing?
If Lab continue to struggle it won't be Keir in trouble straightaway. Leaders tend to throw someone else overboard first either an advisor (e.g. May with Hill and Timothy) or a cabinet member (Truss with Kwarteng).
My guess is Sue Gray will be ditched, if necessary. I think she'll be gone by July 26
But it could be a mischievous tweet reframing something else. However I am not sure what that might be
Why is it OK for people to use their own land for fracking to generate energy, but not OK to use their own land for solar or wind if that's what they want to do with it?
https://x.com/HenryRiley1/status/1711763299656724945
Though from the article he's not talking really about normal pub hours but the late night licencing laws Labour brought in - and which lots of Tories used to oppose.
In the article, a DoH spokesperson denies they're looking at changing licencing hours - which probably means tougher enforcement on late night licence conditions to crack down on places deemed to be targeting getting people blotto into the early hours.
Annoying and puritan as that is, it's probably a lot less unpopular than one would like to think. But of course that's a lot more interesting to write up as a 'war on pubs'.
Infer as you will. To me it looks like a sanction for problem venues. But, as I say, let’s see.