There really is an enormous amount of far-right material on Twitter now. A thread I saw this morning on Trump's Hitler comments has about 60.Nazi-era propaganda posters and slogans loaded on it, with no moderation. Some of yesterday's threads about Chris Kaba, from the right, have antisemitic cartoons on them. Still there today.
It's somewhat parallel to the enshittification cycle, but with Nazis.
4chan being the obvious example. 2007 4chan was a bunch of nerds posting memes and wearing guy fawkes masks trolling scientology. Because of the forum's unmoderated nature, more and more Nazis started moving in as they were banned from other places. More Nazi content gets posted, causing non-Nazi people to leave. Eventually it's just an echo chamber of anti-semitic and other far right bullshit.
They have completely broken the algorithm on Twitter, or maybe it is by design.
The “For you” tab is supposed to show content I assume it thinks I would like. But it’s just far right material or Elon Tweets. I have said so many times I am not interested in this stuff but it keeps showing it to me.
I just use the “Following” tab which avoids this but it’s strange.
Or it's rage bait designed to keep you engaged by arguing with it.
On the positive side, look at how well that strategy worked for Facebook in 2016...
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
The last thing we need if we want to help people support themselves in retirement
We need a stronger private sector to support the apparatus of state we already have. The current government's direction is a larger apparatus of state and a weakened private sector. The balance is all wrong.
There really is an enormous amount of far-right material on Twitter now. A thread I saw this morning on Trump's Hitler comments has about 60.Nazi-era propaganda posters and slogans loaded on it, with no moderation. Some of yesterday's threads about Chris Kaba, from the right, have antisemitic cartoons on them. Still there today.
It's somewhat parallel to the enshittification cycle, but with Nazis.
4chan being the obvious example. 2007 4chan was a bunch of nerds posting memes and wearing guy fawkes masks trolling scientology. Because of the forum's unmoderated nature, more and more Nazis started moving in as they were banned from other places. More Nazi content gets posted, causing non-Nazi people to leave. Eventually it's just an echo chamber of anti-semitic and other far right bullshit.
Yup, and what really worries is the global reach of Twitter compared to 4chan, and its naive anti-moderation.
This could start to become a genuine public order problem for western nations.
Trump is going to be really pissed when he finds out Farage is a UK politician.
I thought the same. To make it worse Farage correctly files the fact that he had his flights and accommodation paid for in his declaration of money received from outside interests so according to Trump slam dunk illegal.
Still people ignore the facts.
Maybe Trump does know. Have you not noticed all has gone quiet on the Trump/Farage love-in? Now, I do not know why that should be but perhaps Team Trump has deliberately cut him out in order to attack the Labour/Kamala link.
There really is an enormous amount of far-right material on Twitter now. A thread I saw this morning on Trump's Hitler comments has about 60.Nazi-era propaganda posters and slogans loaded on it, with no moderation. Some of yesterday's threads about Chris Kaba, from the right, have antisemitic cartoons on them. Still there today.
It's somewhat parallel to the enshittification cycle, but with Nazis.
4chan being the obvious example. 2007 4chan was a bunch of nerds posting memes and wearing guy fawkes masks trolling scientology. Because of the forum's unmoderated nature, more and more Nazis started moving in as they were banned from other places. More Nazi content gets posted, causing non-Nazi people to leave. Eventually it's just an echo chamber of anti-semitic and other far right bullshit.
They have completely broken the algorithm on Twitter, or maybe it is by design.
The “For you” tab is supposed to show content I assume it thinks I would like. But it’s just far right material or Elon Tweets. I have said so many times I am not interested in this stuff but it keeps showing it to me.
I just use the “Following” tab which avoids this but it’s strange.
Or it's rage bait designed to keep you engaged by arguing with it.
On the positive side, look at how well that strategy worked for Facebook in 2016...
I've actually just written my first tweet reply (on Charles Parsons), and have liked only a handful of posts. Yet my 'for you' timeline is frequented by Musk's latest ramblings, often at the very top.
I'd be a bit more optimistic for the Democrats than Robert is but I agree that WV is gone and Tester is toast and that is enough. I also agree that the prospects of Democratic pick ups are very poor even if Cruz is being run a lot closer than was thought likely. With Osborn not even counting as a Democrat laying them for control of the Senate seems a very safe bet.
Incidentally, with 3 SC Justices likely to be selected by the next President it would also mean that Harris may have a very hard time getting her nominations through, even if she wins.
It's possible that Thomas and Alito might step down with a GOP president and senate but Sotomayer certainly will not.
Given her age and health, it might be taken out of her hands.
If Trump wins, the smart move would be for her to resign at once and for Biden to rush through a nominee before the new Senate convenes and blocks it.
This isn’t the West Wing. And even then it didn’t work because of a principled lame duck democratic senator
I've never actually watched the West Wing, but I did see Trump's shenanigans over Amy Coney Barrett and McConnell's over Merrick Garland.
It’s well written
Really? It looked more like a pair of dimwitted grifters
hypocritically flailing about for partisan advantage.
Oh, sorry, did you mean The West Wing?
Realistic enough to appreciate that while you could solve the social security deficit in a single episode, peace in the Middle East was complicated enough to require 2
Biden's greatest dereliction of duty was allowing Trump to get away with sedition and treason. In what world does launching a coup d' etat and storing classified documents in one's bathroom ( particularly when one has lavatorial habits like Trump) not justify a custodial ( or capital) sentence?
Yes, these cases should have been dealt with in 2021 so that there was no question of Trump standing again. It seemed to be the case that it took until 2023 for them to get going despite overwhelming evidence on both Jan 6th and the secret documents case allowing Trump to play for time.
They started in 2021. It was lawfared every step of the way, with Trump spending tens of millions to slow discovery - which in some cases took 18months. I don't think it realistic to say "it should have been dealt with in 2021".
Could Biden have appointed a more thrusting AG than Garland ? Probably.
That doesn't explain away how the two Dem idiots in Georgia stuffed up their case by having an affair.
It also contrasts with the claimed terror of the lawfare that a second term Trump could wage.
I'd be a bit more optimistic for the Democrats than Robert is but I agree that WV is gone and Tester is toast and that is enough. I also agree that the prospects of Democratic pick ups are very poor even if Cruz is being run a lot closer than was thought likely. With Osborn not even counting as a Democrat laying them for control of the Senate seems a very safe bet.
Incidentally, with 3 SC Justices likely to be selected by the next President it would also mean that Harris may have a very hard time getting her nominations through, even if she wins.
It's possible that Thomas and Alito might step down with a GOP president and senate but Sotomayer certainly will not.
Given her age and health, it might be taken out of her hands.
If Trump wins, the smart move would be for her to resign at once and for Biden to rush through a nominee before the new Senate convenes and blocks it.
This isn’t the West Wing. And even then it didn’t work because of a principled lame duck democratic senator
I've never actually watched the West Wing, but I did see Trump's shenanigans over Amy Coney Barrett and McConnell's over Merrick Garland.
It’s well written
Really? It looked more like a pair of dimwitted grifters
hypocritically flailing about for partisan advantage.
Oh, sorry, did you mean The West Wing?
Realistic enough to appreciate that while you could solve the social security deficit in a single episode, peace in the Middle East was complicated enough to require 2
Thereby solving the question around the failure of the Oslo Accords.
Why could the Democrats not sort out the Middle East?
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
The gold blunder was more interesting than just a mistake.
The reason it happened, was that the gold unit at the Bank of England had been shut down. Old fashioned, you see. Despite having made a profit for the government, every single year of its existence.
So when they sold the gold, they had no one to tell them how. They just dumped it on the market and crashed the price. The South African government started asking why the UK government was conducting economic warfare on gold producing nations....
Whisper it, but I think Labour is having an OK couple of weeks and probably steadying the ship after the rapid declines post Reeves' WFA announcement. The budget tax hikes are priced in (and our expectations are probably being managed a bit), the economic news is reasonable, there have been no unforced errors for a week or so and news reporting has generally been neutral or positive.
The Trump news overnight might be quite good for Labour on its left and green flank. I've noticed the Twitter warriors out in force today. Such is the toxicity of Trump to anyone left of Genghis that him hating on Labour might help shore up the urban left wing vote a bit. I doubt it's going to do any damage.
The budget and US election result will determine how the rest of the year goes for the government. Bit of a waiting game for now.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
The problem with this Labour-is-interfering-with-the-US-election story, is that it very much distracts from the very real interference Russia is doing in places like the US and Moldova.
I know it is something political parties and connected individuals do, but I just wish British politicians and the Labour party could have resisted the temptation this time. The benefits are tiny (except for egos), and the downsides massive.
Trump campaign complains to FEC over Labour volunteers for Harris. Says 'far left' Labour are an inspiration for liberal policies of Harris. Plus the last time a UK government sent people to go door to door in America it did not end up too well in the US War of Independence
Instead of charging NI on pension contributions NI should be charged on withdrawals and income. It's just another attack on working people who have DC pensions rather than the public sector who have DB pensions. It will be 4-7 years of low pay growth to pay for the rise in employer's NI and NI on pension contributions and the supposed £5bn hit from the new employee protections.
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You can add housing bubble and the creation of a permanent trade deficit.
Trump is going to be really pissed when he finds out Farage is a UK politician.
I thought the same. To make it worse Farage correctly files the fact that he had his flights and accommodation paid for in his declaration of money received from outside interests so according to Trump slam dunk illegal.
Still people ignore the facts.
Maybe Trump does know. Have you not noticed all has gone quiet on the Trump/Farage love-in? Now, I do not know why that should be but perhaps Team Trump has deliberately cut him out in order to attack the Labour/Kamala link.
Trump isn't that sophisticated. He is quite happy being a hypocrite. He lies relentlessly and his supporters either don't care or are too stupid to know.
I think he is quite happy to do something and then attack his opponents for doing the same thing, usually less blatantly.
The problem with this Labour-is-interfering-with-the-US-election story, is that it very much distracts from the very real interference Russia is doing in places like the US and Moldova.
I know it is something political parties and connected individuals do, but I just wish British politicians and the Labour party could have resisted the temptation this time. The benefits are tiny (except for egos), and the downsides massive.
But think of the selfies they can take, proving their virtue.
But without selfies, how can politicians keep their Farcebook and Twatter feeds up to date and Down Wiff Der Kidz?
And without Farcebook and Twatter updates, politicians would be reduced to reading laws before voting on them and other stupid, boring stuff.
The problem with this Labour-is-interfering-with-the-US-election story, is that it very much distracts from the very real interference Russia is doing in places like the US and Moldova.
I know it is something political parties and connected individuals do, but I just wish British politicians and the Labour party could have resisted the temptation this time. The benefits are tiny (except for egos), and the downsides massive.
But think of the selfies they can take, proving their virtue.
But without selfies, how can politicians keep their Farcebook and Twatter feeds up to date and Down Wiff Der Kidz?
And without Farcebook and Twatter updates, politicians would be reduced to reading laws before voting on them and other stupid, boring stuff.
They should have avoided it this time even though it is their right to do so. Be used and abused by Trump has no upside this end of the pond.
Trump is going to be really pissed when he finds out Farage is a UK politician.
I thought the same. To make it worse Farage correctly files the fact that he had his flights and accommodation paid for in his declaration of money received from outside interests so according to Trump slam dunk illegal.
Still people ignore the facts.
Maybe Trump does know. Have you not noticed all has gone quiet on the Trump/Farage love-in? Now, I do not know why that should be but perhaps Team Trump has deliberately cut him out in order to attack the Labour/Kamala link.
Trump isn't that sophisticated. He is quite happy being a hypocrite. He lies relentlessly and his supporters either don't care or are too stupid to know.
I think he is quite happy to do something and then attack his opponents for doing the same thing, usually less blatantly.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
More pertinently, it's stupid. The last thing any sane chancellor would be doing is encouraging employers to bully their employees out of making pension contributions.
A really daring Chancellor would be talking of ripping up the whole tax system and starting again to see if that would make a difference.
But she seems innately cautious.
This is very puzzling in a chess champion. The very best players tend to be the ones who can outthink the opponent by being bold.
She may of course have some amazing plan that she's concealing to reveal and totally wrong foot us all but (a) the things she's trailing make unlikely and (b) as there is no Opposition worth the name and the rest of us will have to pay tax whether we like it or not it would seem a bit pointless to do that.
The thing about Labour that everybody keeps forgetting is that it is an inherently conservative party. Indeed at the moment it is the most conservative party in the UK. So its economic policy is no great surprise.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You can add housing bubble and the creation of a permanent trade deficit.
Whisper it, but I think Labour is having an OK couple of weeks and probably steadying the ship after the rapid declines post Reeves' WFA announcement. The budget tax hikes are priced in (and our expectations are probably being managed a bit), the economic news is reasonable, there have been no unforced errors for a week or so and news reporting has generally been neutral or positive.
The Trump news overnight might be quite good for Labour on its left and green flank. I've noticed the Twitter warriors out in force today. Such is the toxicity of Trump to anyone left of Genghis that him hating on Labour might help shore up the urban left wing vote a bit. I doubt it's going to do any damage.
The budget and US election result will determine how the rest of the year goes for the government. Bit of a waiting game for now.
Might be good for Labour with the left sending activists to the US but it means a Trump Presidency is likely to be bad for the UK, especially if Vance is running the show.
To give you an idea how much these people are f*ckwits, they put down in writing they wanted to "kill Twitter"
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
Whisper it, but I think Labour is having an OK couple of weeks and probably steadying the ship after the rapid declines post Reeves' WFA announcement. The budget tax hikes are priced in (and our expectations are probably being managed a bit), the economic news is reasonable, there have been no unforced errors for a week or so and news reporting has generally been neutral or positive.
The Trump news overnight might be quite good for Labour on its left and green flank. I've noticed the Twitter warriors out in force today. Such is the toxicity of Trump to anyone left of Genghis that him hating on Labour might help shore up the urban left wing vote a bit. I doubt it's going to do any damage.
The budget and US election result will determine how the rest of the year goes for the government. Bit of a waiting game for now.
Might be good for Labour with the left sending activists to the US but it means a Trump Presidency is likely to be bad for the UK, especially if Vance is running the show.
To give you an idea how much these people are f*ckwits, they put down in writing they wanted to "kill Twitter"
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
However they dress this up it's the employees that will pay through years of low pay growth, except if you work in the public sector where the union bosses sneeze and Labour offers up a 7% pay deal.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I wholeheartedly agree with the emotion, I would feel the same. What I'm about to say isn't intended to counter your point.
It is nevertheless also a fact that the US election will impact UK citizens in a way that is not true the other way around, so I can understand why some activitists might want to campaign over there.
This, though, is a flaw in our global governance structures rather than a problem for the USA, and I would say to those activists that they are directing their efforts at the wrong target, as well as probably having the opposite effect that they would hope for.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
You lot sound like the anti-Churchill obsessives, who charge that Churchill was wrong about the gold standard, India and the abdication crisis, but then can't resist blaming his warmongering for the second world war. Yes, profits from the City paid for public expenditure; no, they did not cause the GFC.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
Hmm. I remember the Tory articles about how financial regulation was still too strong in the mid '90s.
Brown was just responding to a rich vein of Thatcherism.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
I would say "overusing" rather than "using" - PFI can occasionally work under very specific conditions. But Brown didn't use it to private public services more efficiently. He never gave a damn about that. He was desperate to get the debt off the Treasury's books, and that allowed companies like Serco to take the taxpayer for a ride every time.
He did not cause the global financial crisis. Not through competence, however - just because our financial sector isn't big enough by itself to do so.
He caused our domestic financial crisis. Our financial sector was in trouble long before the collapse of Lehman Brothers - in particular Northern Rock. And that was because the regulatory authorities that Gordon Brown had set up just weren't up to the job, and the appointments he made, in particular Masters of Disaster like Lord Turner and Callum McCarthy were lazy, spineless, complacent and fundamentally clueless about the industries they were supposed to oversee.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
Hmm. I remember the Tory articles about how financial regulation was still too strong in the mid '90s.
Brown was just responding to a rich vein of Thatcherism.
Subprime Morgage infection. Tarp and all that. Very stressful for Obamba. The wall street banks were saved and the banker boys received their bonuses! Hooray!
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
I would say "overusing" rather than "using" - PFI can occasionally work under very specific conditions. But Brown didn't use it to private public services more efficiently. He never gave a damn about that. He was desperate to get the debt of the Treasury's books, and that allowed companies like Serco to take the taxpayer for a ride every time.
He did not cause the global financial crisis. Not through competence, however - just because our financial sector isn't big enough by itself to do so.
He caused our domestic financial crisis. Our financial sector was in trouble long before the collapse of Lehman Brothers - in particular Northern Rock. And that was because the regulatory authorities that Gordon Brown had set up just weren't up to the job, and the appointments he made, in particular incompetent technocrats like Lord Turner and Callum McCarthy just weren't up to their jobs.
One might think that those lame duck appointments were a feature of the Brown administration, not an error. How better to let the banks run wild and generate tens of billions in taxable profit and pay billions in taxable bonuses than to put an incompetent in charge of regulating them?
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
However they dress this up it's the employees that will pay through years of low pay growth, except if you work in the public sector where the union bosses sneeze and Labour offers up a 7% pay deal.
You can't have 1 rule for public sector workers and another for private sector workers. Even if it's a niche area like pensions anything that discourages private sector workers from saving into pensions (they don't save enough at the moment) is a stupid thing.
But Reeve's has got a problem of her own making - see needs to find the money the 4% cut in employee NI take away because there is no other source of that amount of money.
We talk about reforming Council Tax, Business Rates and say VAT but all of those have more to do with the fundamental flaws they contain that have built up over the past 30 years - changing all 3 won't generate enough extra revenue..
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
They could perhaps have a reduction based on value added?
We could make the rate for teachers -10%* and for Ofwat employees around 500%.
*This is in no way special pleading and is based on realistic figures I plucked out of my arse.
Whisper it, but I think Labour is having an OK couple of weeks and probably steadying the ship after the rapid declines post Reeves' WFA announcement. The budget tax hikes are priced in (and our expectations are probably being managed a bit), the economic news is reasonable, there have been no unforced errors for a week or so and news reporting has generally been neutral or positive.
The Trump news overnight might be quite good for Labour on its left and green flank. I've noticed the Twitter warriors out in force today. Such is the toxicity of Trump to anyone left of Genghis that him hating on Labour might help shore up the urban left wing vote a bit. I doubt it's going to do any damage.
The budget and US election result will determine how the rest of the year goes for the government. Bit of a waiting game for now.
Might be good for Labour with the left sending activists to the US but it means a Trump Presidency is likely to be bad for the UK, especially if Vance is running the show.
To give you an idea how much these people are f*ckwits, they put down in writing they wanted to "kill Twitter"
We need to learn to stop being scared about what the US might do to us if we aren’t complete simpering supplicants towards it. It’s the same cowardice that drives the pervasive fear of upsetting Putin. Our EU neighbours seem much happier to stand up to them, particularly on trade (sadly many of them are less happy to stand up to Putin).
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
More pertinently, it's stupid. The last thing any sane chancellor would be doing is encouraging employers to bully their employees out of making pension contributions.
A really daring Chancellor would be talking of ripping up the whole tax system and starting again to see if that would make a difference.
But she seems innately cautious.
This is very puzzling in a chess champion. The very best players tend to be the ones who can outthink the opponent by being bold.
She may of course have some amazing plan that she's concealing to reveal and totally wrong foot us all but (a) the things she's trailing make unlikely and (b) as there is no Opposition worth the name and the rest of us will have to pay tax whether we like it or not it would seem a bit pointless to do that.
The thing about Labour that everybody keeps forgetting is that it is an inherently conservative party. Indeed at the moment it is the most conservative party in the UK. So its economic policy is no great surprise.
At the moment this Government could do anything it wants - which means that come October I think a lot of us will be disappointed.
Mind you I'm talking to a senior back office Lib Dem and he doesn't understand the difference between capital gains and income so that's slightly worrying...
Mind you he did study politics at Kings College Durham...
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I wholeheartedly agree with the emotion, I would feel the same. What I'm about to say isn't intended to counter your point.
It is nevertheless also a fact that the US election will impact UK citizens in a way that is not true the other way around, so I can understand why some activitists might want to campaign over there.
This, though, is a flaw in our global governance structures rather than a problem for the USA, and I would say to those activists that they are directing their efforts at the wrong target, as well as probably having the opposite effect that they would hope for.
There are usually US politicos helping the British parties campaign in our elections. There was a delegation of GOPers helping the Tories in this year’s election.
I cannot wait for peoples comments on here after the long awaited budget. I have the champagne on ice in anticipation and a bottle of prosecco for the US election.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
However they dress this up it's the employees that will pay through years of low pay growth, except if you work in the public sector where the union bosses sneeze and Labour offers up a 7% pay deal.
You can't have 1 rule for public sector workers and another for private sector workers. Even if it's a niche area like pensions anything that discourages private sector workers from saving into pensions (they don't save enough at the moment) is a stupid thing.
But Reeve's has got a problem of her own making - see needs to find the money the 4% cut in employee NI take away because there is no other source of that amount of money.
We talk about reforming Council Tax, Business Rates and say VAT but all of those have more to do with the fundamental flaws they contain that have built up over the past 30 years - changing all 3 won't generate enough extra revenue..
Cut welfare spending, push people back into work and start to trim the public sector employment bill. There are too many people working for the state and the private sector can no longer hold up the weight of it all, these taxes will just make things worse as more people drain out of the private sector and decide that a DB pension and similar wages without the hassle of having to actually do a proper job in the public sector.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I wholeheartedly agree with the emotion, I would feel the same. What I'm about to say isn't intended to counter your point.
It is nevertheless also a fact that the US election will impact UK citizens in a way that is not true the other way around, so I can understand why some activitists might want to campaign over there.
This, though, is a flaw in our global governance structures rather than a problem for the USA, and I would say to those activists that they are directing their efforts at the wrong target, as well as probably having the opposite effect that they would hope for.
There are usually US politicos helping the British parties campaign in our elections. There was a delegation of GOPers helping the Tories in this year’s election.
Is the UK the only country who sent helpers over there or have any other countries participated as well? If so they are on the hit list now.
Instead of charging NI on pension contributions NI should be charged on withdrawals and income. It's just another attack on working people who have DC pensions rather than the public sector who have DB pensions. It will be 4-7 years of low pay growth to pay for the rise in employer's NI and NI on pension contributions and the supposed £5bn hit from the new employee protections.
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
You are right but it's difficult because NI in theory is used for 3 things - NHS, contribute toward state pension and unemployment benefit. Now there are 2 solutions there - split NI in 2 at charge 6% for state pension / benefits (working people) and 5% to everyone for the NHS
or just increase income tax - personally I would do the latter...
I cannot wait for peoples comments on here after the long awaited budget. I have the champagne on ice in anticipation and a bottle of prosecco for the US election.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
You lot sound like the anti-Churchill obsessives, who charge that Churchill was wrong about the gold standard, India and the abdication crisis, but then can't resist blaming his warmongering for the second world war. Yes, profits from the City paid for public expenditure; no, they did not cause the GFC.
The large profits at that time were caused by the derivatives bubble.
Sensible people were saying "hang on, why is it that the banks are mucking with stuff, that if the market sneezes..."
The large profits were an effect of the bubble. Not the cause. but deflating the bubble before it popped would have reduced those profits massively.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
I would say "overusing" rather than "using" - PFI can occasionally work under very specific conditions. But Brown didn't use it to private public services more efficiently. He never gave a damn about that. He was desperate to get the debt of the Treasury's books, and that allowed companies like Serco to take the taxpayer for a ride every time.
He did not cause the global financial crisis. Not through competence, however - just because our financial sector isn't big enough by itself to do so.
He caused our domestic financial crisis. Our financial sector was in trouble long before the collapse of Lehman Brothers - in particular Northern Rock. And that was because the regulatory authorities that Gordon Brown had set up just weren't up to the job, and the appointments he made, in particular incompetent technocrats like Lord Turner and Callum McCarthy just weren't up to their jobs.
But, clearly, the entire, and hugely dismissive ideological franework against financial regulation was set in motion in 1986, and continued in Tory rhetoric right up until 2006.
Daniel Hannan. supported by others, was still advocating that we should "become like Iceland", in 2005. In retrospect, it's extraordinary that he was then trusted enough by leading Tories to play such a leading role in Brexit ; but in retrospect, also not surprising, as financial deregulation and Brexit both came from exactly the same ideological source.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
Hmm. I remember the Tory articles about how financial regulation was still too strong in the mid '90s.
Brown was just responding to a rich vein of Thatcherism.
Financial regulation was both massive and useless.
So every trader up to his/her eyeballs in CDO had done their multiple choice, click through, exams on how not to be a criminal, and HR had multiple photocopies of their passport.
Until the "But, one more regulation" types understand that a huge pile of regulations *causes* disasters, we will keep getting this problem.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
You lot sound like the anti-Churchill obsessives, who charge that Churchill was wrong about the gold standard, India and the abdication crisis, but then can't resist blaming his warmongering for the second world war. Yes, profits from the City paid for public expenditure; no, they did not cause the GFC.
The large profits at that time were caused by the derivatives bubble.
Sensible people were saying "hang on, why is it that the banks are mucking with stuff, that if the market sneezes..."
The large profits were an effect of the bubble. Not the cause. but deflating the bubble before it popped would have reduced those profits massively.
You should watch Margin Call...
Definitely and The Big Short! The book is great as well.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
On one level, yes, it's a pointless accounting exercise to increase departmental budgets so that they can pay extra Employers NI back to the Treasury. But that's definitely what they should do. If they don't do so it has two consequences.
Firstly, it makes it very important to have a clear distinction between who is a public sector worker and who isn't. This would end up creating a bunch of unnecessary paperwork in order to comply with tax rules. A pain in the arse and pointless.
Secondly, it makes it relatively cheaper to employ someone in the public sector than in the private sector. This introduces a distortion into hiring decisions. Now, in general, I'd argue that outsourcing, use of contractors and agencies, etc, has gone too far, and there are good reasons for the picnic sector to bring some jobs back in-house to reduce costs and retain knowledge. But you don't want a tax distortion pushing the balance too far the other way.
I don't expect this to happen. It's just another bit of pre-budget mischief-making filling the news vacuum as the government drifts. Hopefully.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
Public sector pensions are also of course different in that they are paid from income (ie tax) not from an accrued pension pot.
That being said, that could be considered an even better argument for not taxing pension contributions. In a field of stiff competition, that was surely Gordon Brown's worst mistake even if he managed to deflect much of the blame.
On Brown's raid: "Worse still, the reduced incentive for UK pension funds to invest in British companies means that they and other institutional investors now own just 4% of UK-quoted shares compared with half of them in 1997."
It certainly was a disastrous blunder, but I'm not even sure it was his worse as there are so many to choose from.
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
You damage some good points, or at least some arguable ones, by blaming Gordon Brown for the Global Financial Crisis. He did not cause it, and led the international response to it.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
Brown refused to do anything to slow the derivatives bubble down. Ed "No" Balls would go out and declare that anyone with reservations about the mad boom was "talking Britain down"
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
Hmm. I remember the Tory articles about how financial regulation was still too strong in the mid '90s.
Brown was just responding to a rich vein of Thatcherism.
Financial regulation was both massive and useless.
So every trader up to his/her eyeballs in CDO had done their multiple choice, click through, exams on how not to be a criminal, and HR had multiple photocopies of their passport.
Until the "But, one more regulation" types understand that a huge pile of regulations *causes* disasters, we will keep getting this problem.
It's like F1 - the winners will be the people who find ways of "meeting" the regulations whilst continuing to do exactly what they want...
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
However they dress this up it's the employees that will pay through years of low pay growth, except if you work in the public sector where the union bosses sneeze and Labour offers up a 7% pay deal.
You can't have 1 rule for public sector workers and another for private sector workers. Even if it's a niche area like pensions anything that discourages private sector workers from saving into pensions (they don't save enough at the moment) is a stupid thing.
But Reeve's has got a problem of her own making - see needs to find the money the 4% cut in employee NI take away because there is no other source of that amount of money.
We talk about reforming Council Tax, Business Rates and say VAT but all of those have more to do with the fundamental flaws they contain that have built up over the past 30 years - changing all 3 won't generate enough extra revenue..
Cut welfare spending, push people back into work and start to trim the public sector employment bill. There are too many people working for the state and the private sector can no longer hold up the weight of it all, these taxes will just make things worse as more people drain out of the private sector and decide that a DB pension and similar wages without the hassle of having to actually do a proper job in the public sector.
The polling suggests Labour are much more vulnerable on public services than they are on taxation. It's about expectation - that the tax bill is higher is a given under Labour, and the outrage dampened somewhat by the record tax burden we had under the Conservatives.
We can argue about the economics all day long - I'd have higher taxation but use the additional cash for infrastructure, energy and housing - but the politics are obvious. Labour will lose their majority on health and crime, not on taxation, and retaining and attracting people into the public sector is therefore a necessity.
A two tier pension systems....if only there was a witty nickname for the prime minster seen to oversee such a system.
If this does come to pass, then I’m afraid the gulf between this government’s rhetoric and the reality will be laid completely bare for all to see.
Given the government supposed core focus is growth, we are still hearing very little that seems like it will increase that. Always seems to be quite the opposite.
Instead of charging NI on pension contributions NI should be charged on withdrawals and income. It's just another attack on working people who have DC pensions rather than the public sector who have DB pensions. It will be 4-7 years of low pay growth to pay for the rise in employer's NI and NI on pension contributions and the supposed £5bn hit from the new employee protections.
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
I contribute *checks* £280 to my pension monthly and my employer £320. The difference is, and I should probably know this an Ni or tax saving that the Gov't then puts into my pension. I take it Reeves' proposal is to send this £40 directly to the Gov't coffers ? & if my employer were to be a PS one resend them the £40 they've had to pay to central pot ? Have I got this right ?
It's not just a gov't in and out because the out ultimately goes to Gov't employees who should be negatively affected as all employees with pensions shd be.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
On one level, yes, it's a pointless accounting exercise to increase departmental budgets so that they can pay extra Employers NI back to the Treasury. But that's definitely what they should do. If they don't do so it has two consequences.
Firstly, it makes it very important to have a clear distinction between who is a public sector worker and who isn't. This would end up creating a bunch of unnecessary paperwork in order to comply with tax rules. A pain in the arse and pointless.
Secondly, it makes it relatively cheaper to employ someone in the public sector than in the private sector. This introduces a distortion into hiring decisions. Now, in general, I'd argue that outsourcing, use of contractors and agencies, etc, has gone too far, and there are good reasons for the picnic sector to bring some jobs back in-house to reduce costs and retain knowledge. But you don't want a tax distortion pushing the balance too far the other way.
I don't expect this to happen. It's just another bit of pre-budget mischief-making filling the news vacuum as the government drifts. Hopefully.
I don't think the article is suggesting public sector employers will have different treatment under NI legislation, rather that their budgets will be adjusted to compensate for the impact of the higher NI. It's carelessly worded in places, but what's proposed is not as outright shocking as some are assuming.
Instead of charging NI on pension contributions NI should be charged on withdrawals and income. It's just another attack on working people who have DC pensions rather than the public sector who have DB pensions. It will be 4-7 years of low pay growth to pay for the rise in employer's NI and NI on pension contributions and the supposed £5bn hit from the new employee protections.
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
I contribute *checks* £280 to my pension monthly and my employer £320. The difference is, and I should probably know this an Ni or tax saving that the Gov't then puts into my pension. I take it Reeves' proposal is to send this £40 directly to the Gov't coffers ? & if my employer were to be a PS one resend them the £40 they've had to pay to central pot ? Have I got this right ?
It's not just a gov't in and out because the out ultimately goes to Gov't employees who should be negatively affected as all employees with pensions shd be.
Edit: Rounded to avoid any sort of personal fraud
No. You are mixing different things up I think.
If you pay £280 pm from your bank account, this = £350 pm gross going into your pension plan.
The employer is paying £320 pm gross. This has nothing to do with NI - it just means that the employer % contribution differs from the employee % contribution for your particular employer's pension offering to you (which is normal)
What the government is - allegedly - considering is whether to introduce NI on the employer contribution - i.e. on the £320. This would make the cost of employing you higher.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Why do public sector employees pay income tax then?
What happens if a public sector employee has pension contributions from a second, private sector job?
It's such a monumental disaster waiting to happen. I think this is a bit like the story about Truss considering a stop to cancer care. There may have been a discussion that went something like this:
1. Let's put NI on pension contributions. 2. That's going to cost the NHS £bns! You'd have to increase the spending budgets to pay for it. 3. I don't really want to be seen to splurge on spending. How do we avoid that? 4. You could just make the public sector exempt. 5. Don't be daft, that would look awful and create all sorts of other problems. We'll split the difference on increasing the budgets.
Only step 4 in the discussion is leaked to the Press, or the Press decide to only report on step 4.
Thanks Robert, I'd agree with the pick-up analysis. Certainly with Brown, it has the feeling more and more it will be a miracle if he hangs on and the mood music seems to have changed. Of the 3 of MI, WI and PA, I would probably say Hovde is the most likely to win and there is a question whether WI polling will be as especially dire as it was in 2020 which (if it is) probably means he is in the lead by a few percentage points.
I would disagree on Rosen in NV though. This from Ralston overnight - the Republicans are smashing it in Nevada and the Clark County firewall has collapsed:
Instead of charging NI on pension contributions NI should be charged on withdrawals and income. It's just another attack on working people who have DC pensions rather than the public sector who have DB pensions. It will be 4-7 years of low pay growth to pay for the rise in employer's NI and NI on pension contributions and the supposed £5bn hit from the new employee protections.
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
I contribute *checks* £280 to my pension monthly and my employer £320. The difference is, and I should probably know this an Ni or tax saving that the Gov't then puts into my pension. I take it Reeves' proposal is to send this £40 directly to the Gov't coffers ? & if my employer were to be a PS one resend them the £40 they've had to pay to central pot ? Have I got this right ?
It's not just a gov't in and out because the out ultimately goes to Gov't employees who should be negatively affected as all employees with pensions shd be.
Edit: Rounded to avoid any sort of personal fraud
I think the proposal is to apply employer's NI to the £320 so your employer now pays an extra £45 per month in tax they can't carve out of your salary which means it will be paid for out of future pay rises. The proposal is that within the public sector the state will be reimbursed the money taking the pressure off the state to recoup the money from pay growth. It's an attack on the private sector, contributions will become less generous and pay rises much less generous over the next decade as companies rebalance payroll costs to include this new tax.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
Instead of charging NI on pension contributions NI should be charged on withdrawals and income. It's just another attack on working people who have DC pensions rather than the public sector who have DB pensions. It will be 4-7 years of low pay growth to pay for the rise in employer's NI and NI on pension contributions and the supposed £5bn hit from the new employee protections.
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
I contribute *checks* £280 to my pension monthly and my employer £320. The difference is, and I should probably know this an Ni or tax saving that the Gov't then puts into my pension. I take it Reeves' proposal is to send this £40 directly to the Gov't coffers ? & if my employer were to be a PS one resend them the £40 they've had to pay to central pot ? Have I got this right ?
It's not just a gov't in and out because the out ultimately goes to Gov't employees who should be negatively affected as all employees with pensions shd be.
Edit: Rounded to avoid any sort of personal fraud
I think the proposal is to apply employer's NI to the £320 so your employer now pays an extra £45 per month in tax they can't carve out of your salary which means it will be paid for out of future pay rises. The proposal is that within the public sector the state will be reimbursed the money taking the pressure off the state to recoup the money from pay growth. It's an attack on the private sector, contributions will become less generous and pay rises much less generous over the next decade as companies rebalance payroll costs to include this new tax.
It’s utterly daft. If it goes ahead I expect that Labour will just be hoping nobody understands why their pay packet isn’t going up as much and why their company is freezing recruitment.
Instead of charging NI on pension contributions NI should be charged on withdrawals and income. It's just another attack on working people who have DC pensions rather than the public sector who have DB pensions. It will be 4-7 years of low pay growth to pay for the rise in employer's NI and NI on pension contributions and the supposed £5bn hit from the new employee protections.
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
I contribute *checks* £280 to my pension monthly and my employer £320. The difference is, and I should probably know this an Ni or tax saving that the Gov't then puts into my pension. I take it Reeves' proposal is to send this £40 directly to the Gov't coffers ? & if my employer were to be a PS one resend them the £40 they've had to pay to central pot ? Have I got this right ?
It's not just a gov't in and out because the out ultimately goes to Gov't employees who should be negatively affected as all employees with pensions shd be.
Edit: Rounded to avoid any sort of personal fraud
I think the proposal is to apply employer's NI to the £320 so your employer now pays an extra £45 per month in tax they can't carve out of your salary which means it will be paid for out of future pay rises. The proposal is that within the public sector the state will be reimbursed the money taking the pressure off the state to recoup the money from pay growth. It's an attack on the private sector, contributions will become less generous and pay rises much less generous over the next decade as companies rebalance payroll costs to include this new tax.
It’s utterly daft. If it goes ahead I expect that Labour will just be hoping nobody understands why their pay packet isn’t going up as much and why their company is freezing recruitment.
Yup, same as increasing employer's NI, Labour want people to aim their anger at the companies rather than the government. Sadly I don't think the Tories will have it in them to lay the blame at Labour's door.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
His record is not irrelevant if the police team involved knew he had a record of being armed and dangerous then how do you think their mindset might just be a tad different when approaching the vehicle?
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
To me this is a leftwing flipside of the delusion that we have "significant influence", via the "special relationship".
If you often mix up another country with your own, in tv news, film, social media, it follows that you often may think yiu can play a significant role with it.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
His record is not irrelevant if the police team involved knew he had a record of being armed and dangerous then how do you think their mindset might just be a tad different when approaching the vehicle?
They didn't know it was him though, the verdict was reached on the basis that the police had intelligence that the car itself was linked to a shooting the day before and that the driver was attempting to smash through a police block with a 2 tonne car and attempting to run over two police officers in the process, had they not shot him both would have been killed and a potential suspect in a shooting the day before would have escaped. The jury took just 3h to come to the same conclusion as the police.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
His record is not irrelevant if the police team involved knew he had a record of being armed and dangerous then how do you think their mindset might just be a tad different when approaching the vehicle?
AIUI the police on the ground did not know who the driver was, and therefore his record was irrelevant. All they knew was that the car had been flagged up in response to a previous firearms incident.
The jury - rightly, in my view - decided that the car driver's actions, added to the information they had on the vehicle, made the shooting at least defensible.
Instead of charging NI on pension contributions NI should be charged on withdrawals and income. It's just another attack on working people who have DC pensions rather than the public sector who have DB pensions. It will be 4-7 years of low pay growth to pay for the rise in employer's NI and NI on pension contributions and the supposed £5bn hit from the new employee protections.
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
I contribute *checks* £280 to my pension monthly and my employer £320. The difference is, and I should probably know this an Ni or tax saving that the Gov't then puts into my pension. I take it Reeves' proposal is to send this £40 directly to the Gov't coffers ? & if my employer were to be a PS one resend them the £40 they've had to pay to central pot ? Have I got this right ?
It's not just a gov't in and out because the out ultimately goes to Gov't employees who should be negatively affected as all employees with pensions shd be.
Edit: Rounded to avoid any sort of personal fraud
I think the proposal is to apply employer's NI to the £320 so your employer now pays an extra £45 per month in tax they can't carve out of your salary which means it will be paid for out of future pay rises. The proposal is that within the public sector the state will be reimbursed the money taking the pressure off the state to recoup the money from pay growth. It's an attack on the private sector, contributions will become less generous and pay rises much less generous over the next decade as companies rebalance payroll costs to include this new tax.
It’s utterly daft. If it goes ahead I expect that Labour will just be hoping nobody understands why their pay packet isn’t going up as much and why their company is freezing recruitment.
To be fair I think it's worth reflecting on whether it is right that a part of someone's benefit package can be paid without employer NI or being charged to the employee as a benefit in kind. The problem is more to do with the favouring of the public sector over the private, the latter being the economy'e engine room.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was armed with a car, that he was ramming backwards and forwards to try and get out of the police stop-and-block.
Ultimately, you get a choice - surrender or not surrender.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
His record is not irrelevant if the police team involved knew he had a record of being armed and dangerous then how do you think their mindset might just be a tad different when approaching the vehicle?
Indeed, that's one element in the assessment of risk. He was also attempting to use his car as a battering-ram, a car is a lethal weapon.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I wholeheartedly agree with the emotion, I would feel the same. What I'm about to say isn't intended to counter your point.
It is nevertheless also a fact that the US election will impact UK citizens in a way that is not true the other way around, so I can understand why some activitists might want to campaign over there.
This, though, is a flaw in our global governance structures rather than a problem for the USA, and I would say to those activists that they are directing their efforts at the wrong target, as well as probably having the opposite effect that they would hope for.
There are usually US politicos helping the British parties campaign in our elections. There was a delegation of GOPers helping the Tories in this year’s election.
Ah that makes sense, I can see why they were so crap now.
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
It's an arguable position. But....
"And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris" - this is personal opinion, unless the person in question has inside data.
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
As I've said for ages - no-one has a clue how the election is going to play out.
But your friend is right that Trump will claim fraud to try and win unless he loses by millions so I'm not surprised it's hard to work out what is happening...
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
As I've said for ages - no-one has a clue how the election is going to play out.
But your friend is right that Trump will claim fraud to try and win unless he loses by millions so I'm not surprised it's hard to work out what is happening...
He’ll claim fraud even if he loses by 10 million votes .
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
No-one knows, its roughly 50-50, but that doesn't guarantee its close. Betting market is now dominated by billionaire whales, probably close to the campaigns so not particularly reliable.
Trading bet = Trump as harder for his price to drift and even if he loses will be sub 10, probably sub 5 for another month past the election whereas for Harris a loss is a betting loss straight away.
A lot has been made of this "the police didn't know it was Kaba driving". I think we need to separate out the legal from the likely reality.
The police wouldn't have been able to say in court under oath yes I knew 100% that Kaba was driving and the car wasn't registered to still yet unknown individual, so lawyers would advice that you don't open up a debate of if you "thought" it was him.
However, this gang was extremely well known, the car was at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the police knew the gang very well, the police knew Kaba very well, they will have known the vehicles they used on a regular basis. It was a £100k car, so not easy to mix up. They had DNA evidence of Kaba at a previous shooting and that car being the get away car. They were in the process of getting an anti-gang order against him to restrict him movements.
They were stopping the car because of the evidence linking it to the previous shootings, so they clearly thought the person driving was involved in the shootings (this was an organised hard stop, not randomly pulling him over because brake light out).
I think on balance of probabilities they knew it was him, but couldn't say in court with absolute certainty and they knew he / his gang regularly carried firearms and where willing to use them. And even then they didn't shoot him until he had tried to ram them several times and even then one shot.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
His record is not irrelevant if the police team involved knew he had a record of being armed and dangerous then how do you think their mindset might just be a tad different when approaching the vehicle?
Indeed, that's one element in the assessment of risk. He was also attempting to use his car as a battering-ram, a car is a lethal weapon.
I think that's the thing here - if the jury had found the police man guilty and then all the information the police officer had been told had come out we would now have people claiming it was a miscarriage of justice.
The more you hear about the case the more you question what on earth were people thinking allowing this to go to court. It should have been a public inquiry where the facts are - dangerous person does something dangerous resulting in policeman using weapon to protect himself.
I suspect most people would have done exactly what the police team did...
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
Yet the BBC manage to find people who are traumatised by his killing.
The other aspect, the family, rather than been unknowing and shocked that their family member was a wrong'un, they knew and actively sort to hide all of this using every legal means possible.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
His record is not irrelevant if the police team involved knew he had a record of being armed and dangerous then how do you think their mindset might just be a tad different when approaching the vehicle?
They didn't know it was him though, the verdict was reached on the basis that the police had intelligence that the car itself was linked to a shooting the day before and that the driver was attempting to smash through a police block with a 2 tonne car and attempting to run over two police officers in the process, had they not shot him both would have been killed and a potential suspect in a shooting the day before would have escaped. The jury took just 3h to come to the same conclusion as the police.
And the jury came to the same conclusion with far less background information than the police themselves had.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I just can't imagine any self-respecting Pennsylvanian having any emotion other than annoyance that Alex Cole Hamilton is knocking on their door. If an American visitor knocked on my door telling me to vote for someone because they knew much more about it than me, I'd have some choice words.
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
It is entirely possible. Trouble is, whatever the outcome, we shall be able to rationalise it, and point to both reliable and misleading indicators. Distinguishing them in advance is harder. Your friend could be right. Or wrong.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
His record is not irrelevant if the police team involved knew he had a record of being armed and dangerous then how do you think their mindset might just be a tad different when approaching the vehicle?
Indeed, that's one element in the assessment of risk. He was also attempting to use his car as a battering-ram, a car is a lethal weapon.
I think that's the thing here - if the jury had found the police man guilty and then all the information the police officer had been told had come out we would now have people claiming it was a miscarriage of justice.
The more you hear about the case the more you question what on earth were people thinking allowing this to go to court. It should have been a public inquiry where the facts are - dangerous person does something dangerous resulting in policeman using weapon to protect himself.
I suspect most people would have done exactly what the police team did...
I think we should have a standard of, if lethal force is offered, the police should shoot you.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I just can't imagine any self-respecting Pennsylvanian having any emotion other than annoyance that Alex Cole Hamilton is knocking on their door. If an American visitor knocked on my door telling me to vote for someone because they knew much more about it than me, I'd have some choice words.
Tbf outside the leafy groves of Edinburgh West an emotion common to most folk.
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
That's a comfort blanket that your friend is clinging to.
The good quality polls show that it is a coin toss, in terms of vote share (which likely means Trump is ahead in the Electoral College).
Whisper it, but I think Labour is having an OK couple of weeks and probably steadying the ship after the rapid declines post Reeves' WFA announcement. The budget tax hikes are priced in (and our expectations are probably being managed a bit), the economic news is reasonable, there have been no unforced errors for a week or so and news reporting has generally been neutral or positive.
The Trump news overnight might be quite good for Labour on its left and green flank. I've noticed the Twitter warriors out in force today. Such is the toxicity of Trump to anyone left of Genghis that him hating on Labour might help shore up the urban left wing vote a bit. I doubt it's going to do any damage.
The budget and US election result will determine how the rest of the year goes for the government. Bit of a waiting game for now.
Most posts prefaced by 'whisper it' tend to be shite I'm afraid, see Camilla Tominey's "Whisper it, but could Sunak be making a comeback?" (or similar sentiments). I can see an equivalent outcome for this post. In fact 'whisper it' and 'hasn't aged well' are pretty much linked like engine and carriage aren't they?
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
It's similar to the way that, during the Troubles, relatives of IRA members who got killed on "active service", would get genuinely indignant that their intended victims *shot back*.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
Yet the BBC manage to find people who are traumatised by his killing.
The other aspect, the family, rather than been unknowing and shocked that their family member was a wrong'un, they knew and actively sort to hide all of this using every legal means possible.
The family was hoping to grift this into BLM type millions
Thank god the judge saw sense and released the deets
Comments
On the positive side, look at how well that strategy worked for Facebook in 2016...
There was also his windfall tax on privatised utilities, which incentivised their executives to focus on paying dividends rather than investment, since they never knew when the taxman would demand more again.
And the sale of our gold reserves when gold was at its cheapest, presignalling that this was the intention.
And the staggeringly complacent and incompetent approach to financial regulation which helped give us the financial crisis.
And the diversion of money from the enterprising and productive private sector to unproductive, unreformed public sector unions.
And his arrogant and completely mad assumption that he had ended the economic cycle.
In fact, Gordon Brown's time as chancellor was one blunder after another, at least once he stopped following Conservative economic policies after a couple of years. Most of the economic problems we face today are due to him. And his time as PM was as bad if not worse.
This could start to become a genuine public order problem for western nations.
It also contrasts with the claimed terror of the lawfare that a second term Trump could wage.
Why could the Democrats not sort out the Middle East?
They needed a double Bill.
The reason it happened, was that the gold unit at the Bank of England had been shut down. Old fashioned, you see. Despite having made a profit for the government, every single year of its existence.
So when they sold the gold, they had no one to tell them how. They just dumped it on the market and crashed the price. The South African government started asking why the UK government was conducting economic warfare on gold producing nations....
The Trump news overnight might be quite good for Labour on its left and green flank. I've noticed the Twitter warriors out in force today. Such is the toxicity of Trump to anyone left of Genghis that him hating on Labour might help shore up the urban left wing vote a bit. I doubt it's going to do any damage.
The budget and US election result will determine how the rest of the year goes for the government. Bit of a waiting game for now.
Brown's biggest error was using PFI for public sector investment.
I know it is something political parties and connected individuals do, but I just wish British politicians and the Labour party could have resisted the temptation this time. The benefits are tiny (except for egos), and the downsides massive.
"Trump campaign accuses Labour of election interference as Starmer tries to play down row - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c1jrld1kjp3t
We want businesses to invest in the economy yet the government is about to hit them with two huge tax rises and worker protections package that will cost billions. All of this money will come out of very high growth multiplier categories like business investment and real terms pay growth and we're going to piss it up the wall of the NHS and welfare spending which is either has a low or negative multiplier. Labour are going to usher in an era of a zero growth, low yield economy.
I think he is quite happy to do something and then attack his opponents for doing the same thing, usually less blatantly.
But without selfies, how can politicians keep their Farcebook and Twatter feeds up to date and Down Wiff Der Kidz?
And without Farcebook and Twatter updates, politicians would be reduced to reading laws before voting on them and other stupid, boring stuff.
This was because the profits the banks were making in the bubble were directly financing, through tax, Brown's spending plans. When the collapse happened, we were left with a structural deficit.
To give you an idea how much these people are f*ckwits, they put down in writing they wanted to "kill Twitter"
https://www.racket.news/p/election-exclusive-british-advisors
It might even be slightly worse than a Vance presidency would be for America, although it would have to be going some.
It is nevertheless also a fact that the US election will impact UK citizens in a way that is not true the other way around, so I can understand why some activitists might want to campaign over there.
This, though, is a flaw in our global governance structures rather than a problem for the USA, and I would say to those activists that they are directing their efforts at the wrong target, as well as probably having the opposite effect that they would hope for.
Brown was just responding to a rich vein of Thatcherism.
He did not cause the global financial crisis. Not through competence, however - just because our financial sector isn't big enough by itself to do so.
He caused our domestic financial crisis. Our financial sector was in trouble long before the collapse of Lehman Brothers - in particular Northern Rock. And that was because the regulatory authorities that Gordon Brown had set up just weren't up to the job, and the appointments he made, in particular Masters of Disaster like Lord Turner and Callum McCarthy were lazy, spineless, complacent and fundamentally clueless about the industries they were supposed to oversee.
But Reeve's has got a problem of her own making - see needs to find the money the 4% cut in employee NI take away because there is no other source of that amount of money.
We talk about reforming Council Tax, Business Rates and say VAT but all of those have more to do with the fundamental flaws they contain that have built up over the past 30 years - changing all 3 won't generate enough extra revenue..
We could make the rate for teachers -10%* and for Ofwat employees around 500%.
*This is in no way special pleading and is based on realistic figures I plucked out of my arse.
Mind you I'm talking to a senior back office Lib Dem and he doesn't understand the difference between capital gains and income so that's slightly worrying...
Mind you he did study politics at Kings College Durham...
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3dvdmzxz82o
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
or just increase income tax - personally I would do the latter...
Sensible people were saying "hang on, why is it that the banks are mucking with stuff, that if the market sneezes..."
The large profits were an effect of the bubble. Not the cause. but deflating the bubble before it popped would have reduced those profits massively.
You should watch Margin Call...
Daniel Hannan. supported by others, was still advocating that we should "become like Iceland", in 2005. In retrospect, it's extraordinary that he was then trusted enough by leading Tories to play such a leading role in Brexit ; but in retrospect, also not surprising, as financial deregulation and Brexit both came from exactly the same ideological source.
So every trader up to his/her eyeballs in CDO had done their multiple choice, click through, exams on how not to be a criminal, and HR had multiple photocopies of their passport.
Until the "But, one more regulation" types understand that a huge pile of regulations *causes* disasters, we will keep getting this problem.
Firstly, it makes it very important to have a clear distinction between who is a public sector worker and who isn't. This would end up creating a bunch of unnecessary paperwork in order to comply with tax rules. A pain in the arse and pointless.
Secondly, it makes it relatively cheaper to employ someone in the public sector than in the private sector. This introduces a distortion into hiring decisions. Now, in general, I'd argue that outsourcing, use of contractors and agencies, etc, has gone too far, and there are good reasons for the picnic sector to bring some jobs back in-house to reduce costs and retain knowledge. But you don't want a tax distortion pushing the balance too far the other way.
I don't expect this to happen. It's just another bit of pre-budget mischief-making filling the news vacuum as the government drifts. Hopefully.
We can argue about the economics all day long - I'd have higher taxation but use the additional cash for infrastructure, energy and housing - but the politics are obvious. Labour will lose their majority on health and crime, not on taxation, and retaining and attracting people into the public sector is therefore a necessity.
Have I got this right ?
It's not just a gov't in and out because the out ultimately goes to Gov't employees who should be negatively affected as all employees with pensions shd be.
Edit: Rounded to avoid any sort of personal fraud
Operation Clark County was a 2004 attempt by the Guardian to influence voters in Clark County, Ohio. It...did not work.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3981823.stm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/18/uselections2004.usa2
If you pay £280 pm from your bank account, this = £350 pm gross going into your pension plan.
The employer is paying £320 pm gross. This has nothing to do with NI - it just means that the employer % contribution differs from the employee % contribution for your particular employer's pension offering to you (which is normal)
What the government is - allegedly - considering is whether to introduce NI on the employer contribution - i.e. on the £320. This would make the cost of employing you higher.
What happens if a public sector employee has pension contributions from a second, private sector job?
It's such a monumental disaster waiting to happen. I think this is a bit like the story about Truss considering a stop to cancer care. There may have been a discussion that went something like this:
1. Let's put NI on pension contributions.
2. That's going to cost the NHS £bns! You'd have to increase the spending budgets to pay for it.
3. I don't really want to be seen to splurge on spending. How do we avoid that?
4. You could just make the public sector exempt.
5. Don't be daft, that would look awful and create all sorts of other problems. We'll split the difference on increasing the budgets.
Only step 4 in the discussion is leaked to the Press, or the Press decide to only report on step 4.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
If you often mix up another country with your own, in tv news, film, social media, it follows that you often may think yiu can play a significant role with it.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
If my recollection is correct Clark County's Republican vote went up.
And I'd say good morning, but everyone seems in a pessimistic mood today.
The jury - rightly, in my view - decided that the car driver's actions, added to the information they had on the vehicle, made the shooting at least defensible.
Ultimately, you get a choice - surrender or not surrender.
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
Harris 49
Trump 47
"And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris" - this is personal opinion, unless the person in question has inside data.
Personal opinion is a sample size of 1.
But your friend is right that Trump will claim fraud to try and win unless he loses by millions so I'm not surprised it's hard to work out what is happening...
Trading bet = Trump as harder for his price to drift and even if he loses will be sub 10, probably sub 5 for another month past the election whereas for Harris a loss is a betting loss straight away.
The police wouldn't have been able to say in court under oath yes I knew 100% that Kaba was driving and the car wasn't registered to still yet unknown individual, so lawyers would advice that you don't open up a debate of if you "thought" it was him.
However, this gang was extremely well known, the car was at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the police knew the gang very well, the police knew Kaba very well, they will have known the vehicles they used on a regular basis. It was a £100k car, so not easy to mix up. They had DNA evidence of Kaba at a previous shooting and that car being the get away car. They were in the process of getting an anti-gang order against him to restrict him movements.
They were stopping the car because of the evidence linking it to the previous shootings, so they clearly thought the person driving was involved in the shootings (this was an organised hard stop, not randomly pulling him over because brake light out).
I think on balance of probabilities they knew it was him, but couldn't say in court with absolute certainty and they knew he / his gang regularly carried firearms and where willing to use them. And even then they didn't shoot him until he had tried to ram them several times and even then one shot.
The more you hear about the case the more you question what on earth were people thinking allowing this to go to court. It should have been a public inquiry where the facts are - dangerous person does something dangerous resulting in policeman using weapon to protect himself.
I suspect most people would have done exactly what the police team did...
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
The other aspect, the family, rather than been unknowing and shocked that their family member was a wrong'un, they knew and actively sort to hide all of this using every legal means possible.
I thought I had read that Starmer had said cabinet members would not get involved in the debate and keep their peace?
Did I dream that?
The good quality polls show that it is a coin toss, in terms of vote share (which likely means Trump is ahead in the Electoral College).
Thank god the judge saw sense and released the deets